A well-designed Klaviyo email is not just one that looks good. It is one that is opened, read in under ten seconds, and acted on — on a 375px mobile screen, in a noisy inbox, competing with every other brand the recipient has subscribed to. The design decisions that produce that outcome are specific and learnable, and they are different from the decisions that produce something that looks impressive in a Figma mockup but underperforms in the inbox.
This post covers the Klaviyo email design best practices that actually move open rate, click rate, and revenue per recipient for DTC brands — from layout fundamentals through to typography, image handling, CTA design, and dark mode. See our companion post on Klaviyo email templates for DTC brands for the structural and content layer.
This post covers email design specifically. If you are setting up Klaviyo from scratch, start with getting the Klaviyo-Shopify integration right before optimising design.
Layout and structure
Single-column layouts are the baseline for Klaviyo emails. Multi-column layouts collapse unpredictably on mobile and create a reading experience that requires more cognitive effort than a DTC email can afford when the recipient has nine seconds. Single column, top to bottom, with clear visual hierarchy between sections.
Klaviyo's email builder renders at 600px wide. Keep your design within that container and avoid going wider than 640px to ensure clean rendering across clients. The safe content width is 560 to 580px — leaving 20 to 40px of padding either side prevents content from hitting the container edge on older clients.
Section hierarchy matters more than most brands realise. The first 150px of the email — from the preheader text to the hero image or headline — determines whether the recipient continues reading or moves on. The preheader should extend the subject line with a distinct piece of information, not repeat it. The hero should communicate who the email is from and what it is about in a single glance. If a recipient has to read two sentences to understand the point of the email, the open rate has already cost you something.
Mobile-first design
More than 60% of email opens happen on mobile. Designing for desktop and testing on mobile afterwards is the wrong sequence. The design decisions that matter on mobile are: minimum 16px body text (anything smaller requires pinching to read), CTA buttons with a minimum tap target of 44px height and full-width or near-full-width on mobile, line lengths that do not exceed 60 characters per line at mobile widths, and sufficient white space between sections so that content does not feel compressed on a small screen.
Klaviyo's drag-and-drop editor makes mobile responsiveness straightforward for standard layouts, but custom HTML blocks and complex multi-section layouts need manual testing. Send to a real device before finalising any template — Klaviyo's preview mode is useful but does not replicate every rendering environment accurately.
Typography in Klaviyo emails
Custom fonts in emails are more complicated than custom fonts on websites. Web fonts load inconsistently across email clients — Gmail on Android ignores them entirely, Outlook on Windows replaces them with the system default. If brand typography is central to the email experience, the safest approach is to use the web font where it will render (Apple Mail, iOS Mail, some desktop clients) and specify a closely matching system font as the fallback for clients that do not support it.
For body copy, system fonts — Arial, Helvetica, Georgia — render reliably across every email client and are not inherently inferior to brand fonts for legibility. The trade-off between brand consistency and rendering reliability is a design decision, not a technical one. For most DTC brands, a combination of a web font for headlines and a system font for body copy produces the best balance of brand expression and inbox reliability.
Font sizing: 22 to 28px for primary headlines, 16 to 18px for subheadings, 14 to 16px for body copy. Below 14px on mobile is inaccessible. Line height of 1.4 to 1.6 for body copy. Adequate line height is the single most commonly neglected typographic decision in email design and one of the highest-leverage for readability.
Images in Klaviyo emails
Images add brand value to emails but introduce two risks: load time and rendering when images are blocked. Both need designing for.
Image file size should be under 200KB per image and ideally under 100KB. Large images slow load time on mobile data connections — and an email that loads slowly is an email that gets closed. Resize images to their display dimensions before uploading to Klaviyo rather than uploading full-resolution images and relying on HTML scaling to reduce them.
Alt text on every image is both an accessibility requirement and a commercial one. A significant percentage of recipients view emails with images disabled — particularly in corporate email environments. An email that communicates nothing when images are off is an email that does no work for that segment. Alt text should describe the image for accessibility but also function as a copy element — a product image with alt text of "Summer collection — shop now" carries more commercial intent than one with alt text of "image001.jpg".
Image-to-text ratio matters for deliverability. Emails that are predominantly images with minimal text are more likely to be filtered by spam algorithms. A ratio of roughly 60% text to 40% images is a reasonable guideline. Emails that use Klaviyo's text blocks alongside images — rather than embedding all text within images — both improve deliverability and ensure the email is readable when images are off.
CTA design
The CTA button is the conversion point of the email. The design decisions around it have a direct impact on click rate. The principles: one primary CTA per email in most cases, styled as a button (not a text link), in a colour that contrasts with the email background and does not appear elsewhere in the email as a neutral element. 30 to 50px of white space around the CTA so it does not get lost in surrounding content. On mobile, full-width or near-full-width buttons are more tappable than narrow centred ones.
CTA copy matters more than most A/B tests acknowledge. "Shop now" is the default and consistently underperforms specific alternatives. "Get yours", "Build your box", "Try the range", "Reorder now" — language that reflects the specific action the recipient is being asked to take outperforms generic commerce language in almost every test. For subscription brands, CTA copy that acknowledges the subscriber relationship — "Update your next box" or "Explore this month's range" — outperforms transactional language with a subscriber audience.
If a secondary CTA is needed, style it distinctly below the primary — as an in-text link or a more muted button variant. Two equally prominent CTAs produce decision paralysis and lower total click rate than a single clear primary action.
Dark mode
Dark mode email rendering has increased consistently — roughly a third of recipients now view email in dark mode on at least some devices. Klaviyo emails rendered in dark mode invert or adjust colours depending on how the email client handles dark mode, and the results are unpredictable if the email has not been designed with dark mode in mind.
The practical steps: use transparent PNG files for logos and icons rather than images with white backgrounds, which will render as white boxes in dark mode. Avoid white text on light backgrounds and black text on dark backgrounds in the same design — both will cause rendering problems in some dark mode implementations. Test dark mode rendering in Klaviyo's preview function and on an actual iOS device before sending any template that uses a dark colour scheme or complex background styling.
For most DTC brands, the highest-leverage dark mode fix is ensuring logos are transparent PNG files. That single change removes the most visually obvious dark mode rendering failure without requiring a full redesign of the template.
Brand consistency across templates
A Klaviyo email programme that uses different typography, colour values, and layout conventions across different flows and campaigns is a programme that trains recipients to not recognise the brand in their inbox. Brand recognition in email is a deliverability signal as well as a design one — recipients who consistently recognise and open emails from a sender improve that sender's reputation with inbox providers over time.
The mechanism for consistency is a master template or a design system in Klaviyo: defined colour variables, fixed typography rules, a consistent header and footer structure, and section components that can be assembled without reinventing the layout for each send. Klaviyo's Universal Content feature — which allows shared sections like headers and footers to be updated once and reflected across all templates — is significantly underused by most DTC brands.
If you want to understand how your current Klaviyo template architecture is performing and what design changes would move the metrics, get in touch. Design is one element of a wider Klaviyo retention programme — and it is the element that determines whether the flows and campaigns Tribe builds for clients are experienced as the brand, or as generic ecommerce email.
Good design also assumes you are on the right platform to begin with — if that is still an open question for your brand, our Klaviyo vs Mailchimp for DTC brands comparison covers how to tell.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best width for a Klaviyo email?
Klaviyo emails render at 600px wide. Keep designs within a 560 to 580px content width, leaving 20 to 40px of padding either side, to ensure clean rendering across email clients. Avoid going wider than 640px. Single-column layouts at this width perform most consistently across desktop and mobile clients without requiring complex responsive CSS.
Can you use custom fonts in Klaviyo emails?
Yes, but with caveats. Web fonts render in Apple Mail, iOS Mail, and some desktop clients but are ignored by Gmail on Android and replaced by system fonts in Outlook on Windows. The recommended approach for most DTC brands is to use the brand's web font for headlines where it will render, and specify a closely matching system font as the fallback. Body copy in a system font — Arial, Helvetica, Georgia — renders reliably across every client and is not inherently inferior for readability.
What font size should I use in Klaviyo emails?
Use 22 to 28px for primary headlines, 16 to 18px for subheadings, and 14 to 16px for body copy. Below 14px on mobile requires pinching to read and should be avoided. Line height of 1.4 to 1.6 for body copy significantly improves readability and is one of the most commonly neglected typographic decisions in email design.
How do I design Klaviyo emails for dark mode?
The most impactful single change is using transparent PNG files for logos and brand marks, which prevents white box rendering in dark mode. Beyond that, test rendering in Klaviyo's preview function and on an iOS device before finalising any template. Avoid white backgrounds on images and ensure sufficient contrast in both light and dark rendering environments. Roughly a third of email recipients now view in dark mode on at least some devices, making dark mode testing a routine part of template QA rather than an edge case.
How many CTAs should a Klaviyo email have?
One primary CTA in most cases, styled as a button with clear contrast and sufficient white space around it. A secondary CTA can be included as a more muted variant or in-text link where there is a genuine secondary action. Two equally prominent CTAs produce decision paralysis and lower total click rate than a single clear primary action. CTA copy that reflects the specific action — "Build your box", "Reorder now" — consistently outperforms generic commerce language like "Shop now".