How to Write a Professional Email Signature: What to Include, With Examples

A professional email signature is four to six short lines of real text: your name, your job title, your company, one phone number and your website, with an optional small logo. Put your name first and make it the most prominent line, keep everything else in one or two quiet colors, and leave out quotes, extra numbers and anything a reader can't act on. If you run a company in the UK or the EU, the law may also require your company's registered details in business emails.

That's the short answer. The rest of this guide covers what to include and in which order, what to leave out, how to create the signature step by step, formatting rules, legal requirements by country, disclaimers, pronouns, photos, buttons, accessibility, dark mode, and five before-and-after rewrites you can copy.

What to include in an email signature (and in what order)

A signature answers three questions for the reader: who is this, what do they do, and how do I reach them. Everything in it should serve one of those three. Here is the order that works for almost every job, from top to bottom:

1. Full name. The name you want people to use. "Kate Morgan", not "K. Morgan" if everyone calls you Kate. This is the largest or boldest line.
2. Pronouns (optional). Right after or under your name, for example "Kate Morgan (she/her)". More on this below.
3. Job title. Short and understandable to an outsider. "Office manager" beats "Head of Workplace Experience Enablement".
4. Company name. Spell it the way it appears on your invoices. If you're a limited company in the UK or EU, use the full registered name somewhere in the signature (see the legal section).
5. One phone number. The one you actually answer. If you work with people abroad, write it in international format: +1 555 0100 or +44 20 7946 0000.
6. Website. Short and clickable, without "https://www.": morganplumbing.com.
7. Address (only if it helps). Useful for shops, clinics, restaurants, trades and anyone with walk-in customers, or where the law requires a registered address. Otherwise skip it.
8. Logo. Small, about 120 to 180 pixels wide. It identifies the company at a glance.
9. Social links (optional, maximum three). Only profiles you keep up to date and that matter for work, which for most people means LinkedIn first.
10. One call to action (optional). A "Book a call" or "Get a quote" button, if you have something people regularly need to do.
11. Legal or compliance text (only if needed). Always last, always small.

You don't need your email address in the signature. The reader already has it: it's in the "From" line. The one exception is when your emails get forwarded or printed a lot, for example to a client's finance team. Then one email line is fine.

Personal or business email signature?

A business email signature (or company email signature) follows the same order, but the company details carry more weight: the logo, the website and, in some countries, the registered company details. A freelancer's signature can lead with the person and treat the "company" line as a description: "Kate Morgan, Freelance bookkeeper". Students and job seekers usually replace the company with their school or the role they want; see our guide to email signatures for students.

What to leave out

The most common mistake isn't a missing detail. It's too many. Each extra line makes the important ones harder to find, especially on a phone.

• Quotes and slogans. An inspirational quote that charms one reader puts off the next. A company tagline is fine only if it explains what you do ("Emergency plumbing, 24/7").
• Several phone numbers. Office, mobile, direct line and fax is four lines for one job. Pick one, two at most.
• Your email address twice. See above.
• A full sentence about the environment. "Please consider the environment before printing this email" adds a line to every message and nobody prints emails because of a signature.
• Animated GIFs. They add file size, pull attention away from your message, and not every email app plays them.
• An image of your whole signature. Many email apps and company networks block images until the reader clicks "show pictures". If your name and number are in an image, they vanish. Screen readers can't read them either. Use real text with a small logo.
• Custom fonts. Outlook and many other apps don't load web fonts. Your carefully chosen typeface turns into Times New Roman.
• "Sent from my iPhone". Harmless, but it's an ad for Apple. Replace it with a short mobile signature; see our iPhone email signature guide.

How to create an email signature in 6 steps

Whether you build it by hand or with a generator, the process is the same.

1. Write the content first, in plain text. Open a note and type the lines from the list above. Cut anything that doesn't pass the "who, what, how to reach" test. Aim for four to six lines.

2. Gather your logo. Use a PNG with the real proportions of your logo, ideally exported at twice the size you'll display it (so 240 pixels wide for a 120-pixel logo) so it stays sharp on high-resolution screens. It must be hosted online, not pasted from your computer, or some recipients will see an attachment or a broken image.

3. Choose a layout. The two classics are logo on the left with details on the right (compact, good for desktop), or everything stacked in one column (safest on phones). Pick one design and stick to it.

4. Build it with email-safe code. This is where most hand-made signatures fail. Email apps are not web browsers. Classic Outlook for Windows uses Microsoft Word to display email, so modern layout code breaks. Signatures that hold together everywhere are built with tables, inline styles and fixed image sizes, which is fiddly to do by hand. A generator does it for you: in Signguin, you type your work email, and it reads your company's logo, brand colors and contact details from your website, then shows the signature in a realistic email preview.

5. Install it in your email app. In Gmail on a computer, go to Settings (the gear icon) > See all settings, scroll to Signature, paste it in and click Save Changes at the bottom. Gmail allows up to 10,000 characters, images included. For other apps, follow our step-by-step guides for Outlook (new Outlook, classic, web and Mac), Gmail, iPhone and the Outlook mobile app.

6. Test it. Send an email to yourself and to a colleague using a different app (for example from Outlook to a Gmail address), and open it on a phone. Click every link. Check that the logo is sharp and the phone number is tappable. If something is missing in Outlook, our Outlook signature not showing guide covers the usual causes.

Formatting rules: fonts, colors, hierarchy and line count

Line count

The oldest written advice on this is RFC 1855, the internet's "netiquette" guidelines from October 1995: "If you include a signature keep it short. Rule of thumb is no longer than 4 lines." Email has changed, but the instinct is right. Today a sensible limit is four to six lines of text, plus a logo or photo beside them. If you need more, you're probably including things the reader doesn't need.

Fonts

Use a font that is installed on practically every computer and phone, so the recipient sees what you see:

• Sans-serif: Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS
• Serif: Georgia, Times New Roman

Use one font for the whole signature. If you want contrast, get it from size and weight, not a second typeface. More on safe fonts, stacks and pairings in our guide to the best font for an email signature.

Size

Make your name 16 to 18 pixels and bold. Keep everything else at 13 to 14 pixels: iPhones enlarge email text under 13 pixels, which can shift your layout. Legal small print can go down to 10 or 11 pixels, but no smaller.

Colors

Use one brand color for accents (your name, a divider line or the icons) and dark gray for the details. That's it: two colors. Bright text on a white background is hard to read, and pure black can look harsh next to a colored logo. Mid-gray (#666666 or darker) is about as light as body text should go.

Hierarchy

The reader's eye should land on your name, then your title and company, then the contact details. You can do this with size (name larger), weight (name bold), color (name in the brand color) and spacing (a small gap or a thin divider between "who" and "how to reach"). Don't use all four at once.

Width and image size

Keep the whole signature under about 600 pixels wide so it fits a phone screen without shrinking, and keep logos around 120 to 180 pixels wide. Our email signature size guide has exact dimensions for logos, photos and banners.

Business email signatures: legal requirements by country

In several countries, a company's business emails are treated like business letters, which means certain company details must appear. The email signature is the easiest place to put them. Here is a short overview, checked against the official texts on October 5, 2026. It is a summary, not legal advice: rules differ by company type, so check with your accountant or legal adviser.

United Kingdom (limited companies and LLPs). The Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015 require a company to show its registered name on "all other forms of its business correspondence and documentation" (regulation 24), and its part of the UK where it's registered (for example England and Wales), registered number and registered office address on business letters, order forms and websites (regulation 25). The Trading Standards guide to company names lists business emails explicitly. Sole traders and partnerships trading under a name other than their own must show the owner's or partners' names and a contact address on business letters.

Germany. For a GmbH, § 35a GmbHG requires, on all business letters "gleichviel welcher Form" (in whatever form) addressed to a specific recipient: the legal form and registered seat, the registry court and registration number, all managing directors (with surname and at least one first name written out), and the supervisory board chair if there is one. Registered merchants (eingetragene Kaufleute) have a similar rule in § 37a HGB. In practice, German business emails carry these details in the signature.

Rest of the EU. Directive (EU) 2017/1132, Article 26, requires company letters and order forms, "whether they are in paper form or use any other medium", to state the register, the registration number, the legal form and the registered office. Each member state writes this into its own law, so the exact list varies by country.

United States. There is no general federal rule requiring company details in everyday business emails. But if an email is commercial (it advertises or promotes a product or service), the FTC's CAN-SPAM guidance requires a valid physical postal address in the message, and the law "makes no exception for business-to-business email". Regulated professions such as lawyers, financial advisers and healthcare providers may have their own rules from their regulator or employer.

What this looks like in practice, for a UK limited company:

Kate Morgan
Director, Morgan Plumbing Ltd
+44 20 7946 0000 · morganplumbing.co.uk

Morgan Plumbing Ltd. Registered in England and Wales, no. 01234567.
Registered office: 1 Example Street, London E1 1AA.

Put the legal lines at the very bottom, in small gray text, so they're there for anyone who needs them without crowding your contact details.

Email signature disclaimers: when they matter and when they're noise

A disclaimer is a paragraph of small print at the end of an email, usually about confidentiality ("This email and any attachments are confidential..."), professional liability or regulatory status.

When a disclaimer makes sense:

• Your industry or regulator expects one (law firms, financial advice, healthcare and similar).
• Your company or a client contract requires it.
• You need to state regulatory status, for example that a firm is authorized by a particular regulator.
• You need the registered company details described above.

When it's noise:

• A 150-word confidentiality notice on every internal email to the person at the next desk.
• Copied text you've never read and couldn't explain.
• A disclaimer longer than the email itself.

Practical rules: keep it to two or three lines, put it last, use 10 to 11 pixel gray text, and don't rely on it to fix mistakes. A confidentiality notice doesn't make it safe to send sensitive files to the wrong address; double-checking the recipient does. If you need one, the free Signguin editor has a "Legal note / disclaimer" field that adds it as small print under your signature.

Email signature pronouns

Adding pronouns is optional and increasingly common, especially in international teams, education, health and anywhere people regularly email strangers whose names don't signal gender. It saves the reader from guessing between "Mr." and "Ms." in a reply.

How to add them:

• Put them right after your name or on the line below: "Alex Rivera (they/them)" or "Alex Rivera | she/her".
• Use the same format as the rest of your team if your company has a convention.
• Keep them the same size as your title, not larger than your name.

Whether to add them is your choice. Nobody should feel forced to, and a signature without pronouns is not unprofessional.

Email signature with photo

A small headshot makes sense when people will meet you, call you or choose you personally: sales, real estate, recruiting, consulting, health, coaching and freelancers. For back-office roles or company-wide signatures, a logo usually does more.

If you add a photo:

• Use a recent, well-lit head-and-shoulders shot with a plain background.
• Display it at 80 to 100 pixels, round or square, to the left of your details.
• Use either the photo or the logo as the main image. If you need both, make the logo smaller.
• Make sure the photo is hosted online, not attached, so it doesn't show up as an attachment in every email.

In Signguin, the photo is part of Premium (a one-time payment, no subscription). The free designs use your logo.

CTAs and banners: one, or none

A call-to-action button ("Book a call", "Get a quote", "See listings") or a banner (a wide image under the signature) can be useful, because your signature is seen in every email you send. Two rules keep it professional:

1. One at a time. One button or one banner, not both, and not three links in a row.
2. Make it useful to the reader. "Book a 15-minute call" helps someone who wants to talk. "Check out our new brand video" mostly helps you.

Change banners when the offer ends. A banner for a webinar from last spring tells people nobody is looking after the signature. Banners should be about 600 pixels wide or less and short, so they don't dominate the email on a phone.

Accessibility: make it readable for everyone

Accessibility is mostly common sense, and it also makes your signature work better when images are blocked.

• Real text, not an image. Screen readers, search inside the mailbox and copy-paste all need text.
• Alt text on every image. The logo's alt text should be the company name ("Morgan Plumbing logo"). Social icons should say what they link to ("LinkedIn"). When images are blocked, the reader sees these words instead.
• Enough contrast. The web accessibility standard WCAG 2.2 asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text (18 point, or 14 point bold). Light gray on white often fails. Check your colors with any free contrast checker.
• Readable size. At least 13 pixels for contact details.
• Clickable phone numbers and links. Phone numbers formatted as links can be tapped to call on a phone.
• Don't rely on color alone. If links are only distinguishable by color, some readers won't spot them. An underline or a clear label ("Website:") helps.

Mobile and dark mode

Most of your emails will be read on a phone at least some of the time. A signature that looks fine on a 27-inch monitor can wrap into a mess on a 6-inch screen.

For mobile:

• Keep it under about 600 pixels wide, or use a stacked design that reads in one column.
• Use images with a fixed width, so they don't blow up to full size.
• Make tap targets (phone, website, button) big enough for a thumb.

For dark mode: Gmail, Apple Mail and Outlook can show emails on a dark background and may change your text colors. The usual casualty is the logo: a dark logo on a transparent background disappears on a dark screen. Fixes:

• Use a logo version that works on both light and dark, or
• Put the logo on a small white box, or
• Avoid pure black text that the app can't adjust well.

Signguin's preview has phone/desktop and light/dark toggles so you can see this before you install, and a "White box behind logo" option for logos that disappear in dark mode. App-by-app details are in our email signature dark mode guide.

Keeping signatures consistent across a small team

When five people make their own signatures, you get five fonts, three logo versions and someone's personal Gmail address. Consistency matters because clients see these signatures side by side in the same thread. For a small team without IT staff, this works:

1. Agree on one design and one set of rules. Which fields are required, how phone numbers are written, which logo file to use, and whether pronouns, photos and social links are allowed.
2. Write it down in one place. A shared document with the rules and a correct example.
3. Have each person create theirs from the same design. With a generator, everyone picks the same template, so only the personal details differ.
4. Update everyone when something changes. A new phone system, a new address or a rebrand means every signature needs redoing. Put a reminder in the calendar to check once a year.

Signguin is built for individuals right now: each person makes and installs their own signature. A Teams option for central management is not available yet (there's a waitlist). Larger companies that need to push signatures to every mailbox centrally usually do it through their Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace admin or dedicated signature management software.

Before and after: 5 email signature rewrites

Here are five real-world patterns and how to fix them. Names and numbers are made up.

1. The kitchen sink

Before:

Best wishes,
Daniel Green
Senior Account Executive | Sales | EMEA Region
GreenLeaf Solutions Ltd
Office: +44 20 7946 0001 | Mobile: +44 7700 900001 | Fax: +44 20 7946 0002
Email: daniel.green@greenleafsolutions.co.uk
Web: https://www.greenleafsolutions.co.uk
LinkedIn | X | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
"The best way to predict the future is to create it."
Please consider the environment before printing this email.

After:

Daniel Green
Senior account executive, GreenLeaf Solutions Ltd
+44 7700 900001 · greenleafsolutions.co.uk
[LinkedIn]

What changed: one number, no repeated email, one social link, no quote, no printing note. Ten lines became four.

2. The image-only signature

Before: the whole signature is one designed JPG. With images blocked, the reader sees an empty box or an attachment called image001.jpg.

After: the same design rebuilt as real text with a small hosted logo. Same look, but the name and phone number survive blocked images and can be copied.

3. The freelancer with no context

Before:

Sam
sam.k.design@gmail.com

After:

Sam Kowalski
Brand designer for small food businesses
+1 555 0100 · samkowalski.design
[Portfolio]

What changed: full name, a title that says who Sam helps, a website instead of a repeated email, and one portfolio link.

4. The UK company missing its legal details

Before:

Priya Shah
Operations Manager
Brightwater Cleaning
07700 900123

After:

Priya Shah
Operations manager, Brightwater Cleaning Services Ltd
+44 7700 900123 · brightwatercleaning.co.uk

Brightwater Cleaning Services Ltd. Registered in England and Wales, no. 07654321.
Registered office: 2 Example Road, Leeds LS1 1AA.

What changed: the full registered name, international phone format, a website, and the registered details in small print at the bottom.

5. The tradesperson on the go

Before: no signature at all, just "Sent from my iPhone".

After:

Tom Baker
Baker Electrical, licensed electrician
+1 555 0123 · bakerelectrical.com
Serving Springfield and nearby towns

What changed: a customer can now call back, check the website and see the service area, straight from the email.

Professional email signature templates by line of work

The basics are the same for everyone, but the emphasis changes with the job. A few examples:

For more ideas, browse our email signature examples or the full set of email signature templates. If you're in real estate, our realtor email signature page covers what agents typically add.

Penguins are born in a tuxedo, so they never have to think about looking professional. The rest of us need about five minutes and the list above.

One more detail: the line right above your signature, your sign-off, sets the tone of the whole email. Our guide to email sign-offs has 60+ options by situation.

FAQ

What should a professional email signature include?

Your full name, job title, company name, one phone number and your website. Optionally add a small logo, up to three social links, your pronouns, a photo or one call-to-action button. Companies in the UK and EU may also need their registered name, registration number and registered office. Keep it to four to six lines of text.

How long should an email signature be?

Four to six lines of text, plus a logo or photo alongside. The internet's 1995 netiquette guidelines suggested no more than four lines, and that still works for most people. Legal lines at the bottom don't count against this, but keep them to two or three lines in small gray text.

Should I put my email address in my signature?

Usually not. The reader already has it in the "From" field and the reply button. Include it only if your emails are often forwarded or printed, so the next reader can still contact you. In that case, one line is enough.

What font is best for a professional email signature?

A font installed on nearly every device: Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Tahoma or Trebuchet MS for sans-serif, Georgia or Times New Roman for serif. Custom web fonts don't load in Outlook and many other apps, so they get replaced with a default. Use one font and create emphasis with size and bold.

Is it legally required to have an email signature?

Not as such, but in the UK, Germany and other EU countries, companies must show certain details (like the registered name, number and office) in business correspondence, and emails count. The signature is the easiest place to put them. In the US, commercial emails need a valid postal address under CAN-SPAM. Check with your adviser for your exact company type.

Should I add a photo to my email signature?

Add one if people choose or meet you personally: sales, real estate, consulting, health, recruiting and freelance work. Use a recent, well-lit headshot at 80 to 100 pixels. For company-wide or back-office signatures, a logo is usually the better choice. Avoid using both at full size.

How do I make an email signature that works in Outlook and Gmail?

Build it with tables and inline styles, use a standard font, host your images online at a fixed size and keep it under about 600 pixels wide. Signatures made in Word or with modern web code often break in classic Outlook for Windows. A generator that outputs email-safe HTML handles this, then you paste it into each app.