Font Size Best Practices for Body Text and Headings

Level: Basic

Text that's too small forces visitors to strain or zoom, quietly undermining the entire experience regardless of how good the rest of the design looks.

16 Pixels Is a Common, Reasonable Body Text Baseline

While not a universal rule, a body text size around this range tends to balance readability with efficient use of space across most devices.

Headings Should Create Clear Size Contrast

A heading only slightly larger than body text fails to create the visual hierarchy headings are meant to provide.

Never Rely Solely on Visual Testing at One Screen Size

A font size that looks fine on a large desktop monitor can feel too small once viewed on an actual mobile device.

Next step: Use the Webpage Screen Resolution Simulator to check how your current font sizes actually render across a range of real device screen sizes.