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Typography & Fonts

Ghost offers multiple ways to customize the fonts used in your theme. You can either use Ghost’s built-in typography settings or add custom fonts manually.

Default fonts

Essence ships with self-hosted variable fonts:

  • Body: Inter — used for post content and general text
  • Headings: Oswald — used for titles, navigation, buttons, and UI elements

These load from the theme bundle. Ghost’s Custom Fonts settings override them when you pick fonts in the admin.

Ghost Typography Settings

Ghost provides built-in typography customization through the admin panel. Here’s how to access these settings:

  1. Go to Settings → Site → Design & branding
  2. Click Customize
  3. Change fonts in Typography section

Ghost typography settings

You can change both heading and body fonts using Ghost’s native interface. Essence reads Ghost’s --gh-font-body and --gh-font-heading CSS variables, so your selections apply site-wide.

To restore Essence defaults, set both Heading font and Body font to Theme default in Ghost Typography settings.

If you want fonts not available in Ghost’s curated selection, add them manually using Google Fonts or self-hosted files.

Using Custom Google Fonts

Code Injection is required to add custom CSS.

  1. Open the Google Fonts website and select the font you want to use. For example, we will use Roboto for body and Oswald for headings.
  2. Add these fonts to collection using the Get font button Google Fonts selection
  3. Click on the Get embed code button Google Fonts selection
  4. Select the font weights and styles if you want and copy the code from the Web tab Google Fonts selection

Add the following CSS code:

<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Oswald:wght@200..700&family=Roboto:ital,wght@0,100;0,300;0,400;0,500;0,700;0,900;1,100;1,300;1,400;1,500;1,700;1,900&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">
 
<style>
  :root {
    --gh-font-body: "Roboto", sans-serif;
    --gh-font-heading: "Oswald", sans-serif;
  }
</style>

Set both “Heading font” and “Body font” to “Theme default” in Ghost Typography settings so Ghost does not load conflicting fonts.

Using Custom Font Files

If you want to use custom fonts that aren’t available on Google Fonts or if you prefer to host fonts yourself for better performance and privacy, you can add custom font files directly to your theme.

This method requires direct access to your theme files and basic knowledge of HTML and CSS. Make sure to back up your theme before making any changes.

Step 1: Prepare Font Files

First, make sure you have the font files in the correct formats. For maximum browser compatibility, you should have:

  • .woff2 (Web Open Font Format 2) — modern browsers
  • .woff (Web Open Font Format) — fallback for older browsers

You can convert your fonts using tools like Font Squirrel’s Webfont Generator or Transfonter.

Step 2: Edit Theme Files

  1. Download your Essence theme following the instructions in Editing Theme Code guide
  2. Create a new folder called assets/fonts/ if it doesn’t already exist
  3. Upload your font files to this folder

Your folder structure should look like this:

essence/
├── assets/
│   ├── fonts/
│   │   ├── your-custom-font.woff2
│   │   ├── your-custom-font.woff
│   │   ├── your-custom-font-bold.woff2
│   │   └── your-custom-font-bold.woff

Step 3: Add Font Declarations

You’ll need to edit the default.hbs file to add your custom fonts:

  1. Open the default.hbs file in your code editor
  2. Locate the <head> section
  3. Add your font declarations before the closing </head> tag:
<head>
    <!-- Existing head content will be here -->
 
    <!-- Add your custom font declarations here -->
    <style>
        @font-face {
            font-family: 'YourCustomFont';
            src: url('{{asset "fonts/your-custom-font.woff2"}}') format('woff2'),
                 url('{{asset "fonts/your-custom-font.woff"}}') format('woff');
            font-weight: 400;
            font-style: normal;
            font-display: swap;
        }
 
        @font-face {
            font-family: 'YourCustomFont';
            src: url('{{asset "fonts/your-custom-font-bold.woff2"}}') format('woff2'),
                 url('{{asset "fonts/your-custom-font-bold.woff"}}') format('woff');
            font-weight: 700;
            font-style: normal;
            font-display: swap;
        }
 
        :root {
            --gh-font-body: 'YourCustomFont', sans-serif;
            --gh-font-heading: 'YourCustomFont', sans-serif;
        }
    </style>
</head>
  1. Save the file, re-zip your theme, and upload it following the instructions in Editing Theme Code guide

When modifying theme files directly, be aware that theme updates may overwrite your changes. See Updating Theme guide for how to preserve custom modifications during updates.

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