Your website design
Website design changes how your public website looks — the colours, the typefaces, how rounded the corners are, how much space sits between things, and the shape of the top of the page. It does not touch a word of your content. Pick one, press Apply this design, and it is live.
What you get
Twenty-five designs for each service, so a groomer and a dog walker are not offered the same twenty-five. Five are free for ever; Standard adds ten and Premium another ten. The ones you do not have are still shown, padlocked, with their real preview — you can see exactly what you would be buying rather than take our word for it.
The pictures are honest
Each preview is drawn from the design’s own palette and layout by the same code that dresses the site, not from a screenshot of something else. What you pick is what you get.
If your plan changes
A paid design keeps working while you are on the plan that includes it. If the plan lapses, your website falls back to the free house look for your service rather than going unstyled — and your choice is remembered, so renewing brings it straight back with nothing to re-pick.
Fonts
Every design names a typeface. Leaving Load the designers’ fonts switched off is the safe default: your site uses the nearest font already on each visitor’s device, so the serif designs still read as serif and the bold ones still read as bold, but the exact face is not guaranteed. Switch it on and the real typefaces are fetched from Google Fonts — which means each visitor’s browser contacts Google, carrying their IP address. That is a decision about your customers’ data, which is why it is yours to make rather than ours.
Example
A groomer on the free plan tries all five designs in a couple of minutes, settles on Editorial, and switches the fonts on because her clients are all in the UK and she is comfortable with the Google request.
FAQ
Will this change my pages or photos?
No. A design only changes colours, type, corners and spacing. Your content, menus, logo and images stay exactly as they are, which is why it is safe to try several.
I picked a design and my site looks the same.
Check the notice at the top of the page. The usual causes are that the site is running a theme of its own rather than one of ours, or that the design you chose is not on your plan — both are called out there.
Some colours did not change.
Anything your theme paints itself — a section with a colour written into the theme rather than taken from the design — keeps its own colour. The page background, text, links, buttons and forms all follow the design.
The colour on my buttons is not exactly the one in the preview.
It is deliberate, and it is usually a shade or two. Some accents are lovely as a block of colour and unreadable behind small text, so button and link colours are deepened just enough for the label to pass the accessibility standard. The preview shows the adjusted colour, not the raw one.
Can I keep my own colours?
Yes. If you have set colours in the Customizer they win over the design. Applying a different design replaces them, so note them down first if they matter.
Do the fonts cost anything?
No. Every typeface used is free and openly licensed. The only cost of switching them on is the request each visitor’s browser makes to Google.