Choosing a Letterhead Template

A free letterhead template is only a shortcut if it actually fits how your organisation writes and sends letters. Pick the wrong starting point and you spend more time undoing someone else's defaults than actually designing — swapping fonts, repositioning a logo, fighting margins that were never right for your paper size in the first place. This guide walks through a repeatable process for choosing a template that fits from the first click, plus the mistakes that make an otherwise good template look amateur.

Start with your paper size, not the design

It sounds trivial, but paper size should be the very first decision, before you look at a single template thumbnail. Margins, heading size and footer spacing are all tuned to a page size — a template built around A4 proportions will crop oddly on US Letter and vice versa, because the two sheets are neither the same width nor the same height.

Every template in the Letterheads editor lets you swap paper size after the fact from the Layout tab without losing your logo, colours or fonts — but starting on the right size the first time avoids a re-check pass later, especially once you've already filled in your address and signature block.

Match the template category to your audience

A law firm and a ceramics studio should not use the same letterhead, even if both would call themselves "professional." A template carries an implicit tone through its font pairing, colour palette and layout choices — serif headings and muted colour read as established and formal, geometric sans-serif headings read as modern, and script accents read as personal. Choosing against that grain is the single most common reason a finished letterhead feels "off" even when nothing is technically broken.

Corporate, company and official templates

These lean on high-contrast serif or clean geometric sans headings, restrained one- or two-colour palettes, and either a frame border or a top bar. They suit law firms, accountants, government offices and any registered company that needs its letterhead to double as a compliance document, since these templates leave clear room for a footer with a registration number and tax ID.

Creative, startup and professional templates

Left-aligned layouts, thinner or absent borders, and a confident single accent colour are the hallmarks here. They suit design studios, marketing agencies, consultants and tech companies — anyone who wants the letterhead to feel current rather than inherited from a previous generation of stationery.

Medical, school and legal & formal templates

These favour a coloured left-bar or frame border, a solid or double divider under the header, and a legal detail line reserved in the footer. Clinics, hospitals, schools and formal practices use this register because it reads as organised and trustworthy without looking severe.

Personal, love and fun templates

Script or warm serif headings, softer colour palettes, and — for the novelty templates — a smaller note-card paper size (A5) rather than a full business page. These are built for individual correspondence, love letters, and printable notes rather than anything a registered business would send externally.

Check what the template actually turns on and off

Some templates hide the tagline by default, move contact details to the footer instead of the header, or drop the footer entirely — the Tooth Fairy template does this on purpose, since a short note doesn't need a legal footer. Before you start typing your address in, open the Layout and Extras tabs and confirm the toggles match what you actually need.

• Is the tagline shown, and do you have one worth showing?
• Are contact details in the header (visible immediately) or the footer (out of the way of the letter)?
• Is the legal detail line (tax ID, registration number) switched on — required if you're a registered company?
• Is a signature block enabled, and does its style (line, dotted, script) match how you actually sign?
• Are social links relevant to this letterhead, or should they be removed for a more formal register?

The three customisations that carry the most weight

Once you've picked the right base template, not every setting matters equally. Three changes do almost all of the work of making a template feel like yours rather than a generic download.

1. Your logo

Upload it before touching anything else — its natural width affects how the rest of the header lays out, so adjusting colours or fonts before the logo is in place means redoing that work once it arrives. Aim for a logo image at least 600px wide so it stays sharp when scaled up for print.

2. Your accent colour

This is usually your primary brand colour, and it does more visual work than any other single setting — it colours the tagline, the divider line, and often the signature label. Changing just this one value can make a stock template feel bespoke.

3. Your heading font

Change this last. It has the single biggest visual effect of any typography setting, so it's easiest to judge correctly once your logo and colour are already in place and you can see how the whole header reads together.

Free vs paid letterhead templates: what actually differs

Free and paid letterhead tools both offer templates, but the practical differences usually show up at export time rather than in the design step.

Letterheads specifically avoids the two things that make "free" tools frustrating in practice: every export (PDF, PNG, JPG and SVG) is full resolution with no watermark, and no account or credit card is required to use any template or export format.

Common mistakes that make a free template look unfinished

• Leaving placeholder text — a sample tagline or address left unedited is the fastest way to look careless.
• Using more than one border style at once (a frame plus a heavy divider plus a background pattern reads as cluttered, not premium).
• Picking a heading font and body font that are both decorative — one should always be quiet so the other can do the talking.
• Ignoring the footer — an empty or default footer under a carefully designed header looks unfinished by contrast.
• Exporting at screen resolution instead of print resolution when the letterhead is actually going to a printer.
• Choosing a paper size that doesn't match where you actually operate, then being surprised when it prints with odd margins.

From template to finished letterhead in five steps

1. Pick your paper size (A4 or US Letter, most commonly) under the Layout tab before anything else.
2. Choose a template whose category matches your industry and tone from the Templates tab.
3. Upload your logo under the Logo tab and adjust its width and position.
4. Set your accent colour and heading font under the Style tab — in that order.
5. Fill in your company details under the Details tab, check the Extras toggles, then export as PDF, PNG, JPG or SVG.

None of this needs to take more than a few minutes once you know the order to work in: size, category, logo, colour and font, then details. Skipping ahead — picking fonts before a logo is uploaded, for instance — is usually what turns a five-minute job into a half-hour of undoing earlier choices.