Lato
sans-serif · Designed by Łukasz Dziedzic
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Lato is a humanist sans-serif with a clean, professional appearance that manages to feel approachable without being casual. Designed by Łukasz Dziedzic, it has slightly rounded letterforms and semi-condensed proportions that give it warmth at display sizes while remaining highly legible at small sizes. Its strokes have subtle variation rather than being purely geometric, which keeps it from feeling cold or mechanical. The overall personality lands somewhere between friendly and serious, making it versatile across a wide range of contexts without strongly committing to any single mood.
Lato works well as a primary UI font for web applications and dashboards where readability across many text sizes matters. It is a solid choice for corporate or startup branding that needs to feel modern and trustworthy without the stiffness of fonts like Arial or the quirkiness of something more expressive. Editorial and long-form content sites also benefit from Lato as a body or supporting text font, particularly when paired with a more distinctive heading typeface to create contrast and visual hierarchy.
Best suited for: Recommended for web applications, dashboards, corporate branding, startup identity systems, and editorial layouts where consistent readability across multiple sizes is essential.
Design considerations: The ten available weights from 100 to 900 support flexible typographic hierarchies and emphasis without changing typeface. Its humanist construction with subtle stroke variation suits both interface design and longer reading experiences, though pairing with a more distinctive typeface can strengthen visual contrast in editorial contexts.
Pairing guidance: Pair Lato with Playfair Display for elegant editorial layouts where a high-contrast serif heading complements clean body text, with Merriweather for approachable long-form content that benefits from a traditional serif voice, or with Josefin Sans when a complementary geometric sans-serif is preferred for supporting headlines or accent elements.
Pairs well with
Lato at a glance
Łukasz Dziedzic
SIL Open Font License 1.1
December 2010
September 2025
10 (5 weights + italics)
Sans Serif
2
Google Fonts
All 10 Lato styles
| Weight | Name | Upright | Italic |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | Thin | Aa Bb Gg 123 | Aa Bb Gg 123 |
| 300 | Light | Aa Bb Gg 123 | Aa Bb Gg 123 |
| 400 | Regular | Aa Bb Gg 123 | Aa Bb Gg 123 |
| 700 | Bold | Aa Bb Gg 123 | Aa Bb Gg 123 |
| 900 | Black | Aa Bb Gg 123 | Aa Bb Gg 123 |
Lato character map
Which languages does Lato support?
Lato includes 2 character sets:
- Latin: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and other Western European languages
- Latin Extended: Central and Eastern European languages such as Polish, Czech, Turkish, Romanian and Hungarian
It does not include Cyrillic or Greek characters, so it can't set Russian, Ukrainian or Greek text.
Can I use Lato commercially?
Yes, it's free for personal and commercial use. Lato is released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. You can use it in logos, websites, apps, videos, printed products and merchandise without paying or asking permission. The one thing you can't do is sell the font file on its own.