Your product label is usually the first thing a customer looks at when they pick something up. Before they read the description on your website, before they check the price — they look at the label. It tells them what they’re holding, who made it, and whether it feels like something worth buying. Getting your labels right isn’t just about looking good. It’s about being clear, consistent, and trustworthy.
Why consistent labelling matters across your range
When a customer buys one of your products and likes it, there’s a good chance they’ll come back for another. If every product in your range has a different label style — different fonts, different layouts, different colours — it’s harder for people to recognise your brand at a glance. Consistency makes you look established, even if you’re just starting out.
That doesn’t mean every label has to be identical. You can use different colours to distinguish between scents, flavours, or product types. But the bones of the design — the logo placement, the font, the general layout — should stay the same. That way, someone browsing a shelf or scrolling through your shop can immediately tell that two products belong to the same range.
It also saves you time. Once you’ve got a template that works, creating labels for new products is quick and straightforward. You’re not starting from scratch every time you launch something new. You just swap out the product name and any details that change, and the rest stays put.
What to include on your labels
At a minimum, your label needs the product name and your brand name. Beyond that, it depends on what you’re selling. For food and drink products, you’ll need an ingredients list, allergen information, weight or volume, and a best before date. For cosmetics and skincare, you’ll need a full ingredients list (usually in INCI format), usage directions, and batch information.
Even if your product doesn’t have strict legal requirements, it’s still worth including as much useful information as you can fit. Customers appreciate knowing what’s in something, how to use it, and how to store it. A candle label might include the burn time and a safety warning. A soap label might list the scent notes and the weight. These things build trust.
Your contact details are worth including too — a website address or social media handle at least. If someone loves your product and wants to reorder, make it easy for them to find you. Don’t make them hunt around for your details.
Legal requirements worth knowing about
This bit isn’t the most exciting part of running a business, but it’s important. Depending on what you sell and where you sell it, there are rules about what has to appear on your labels. In the UK, cosmetics need to comply with the Cosmetic Products Regulation, which means listing ingredients in a specific order and including certain safety information. Food products have their own set of rules under food labelling regulations, covering allergens, nutritional info, and origin.
If you’re selling candles or wax melts, you may need CLP (Classification, Labelling and Packaging) labels with hazard symbols and safety phrases. These aren’t optional — trading standards can ask to see them, and marketplaces like Etsy and Amazon may require them before you can list your products.
It’s worth checking the specific requirements for your product type before you finalise your label design. You don’t want to print 500 labels only to find out you’ve missed a required symbol or statement. A quick look at the relevant regulations — or a conversation with a compliance consultant — can save you a lot of hassle later.
Keeping labels readable at small sizes
One of the biggest mistakes people make with product labels is trying to fit too much onto too small a space. If your text is so tiny that customers need a magnifying glass, something’s gone wrong. Readability should come before aesthetics every time.
Start with your most important information and work outwards. The product name and brand should be the most prominent things on the label. After that, arrange the rest by priority. If you’re running out of space, consider whether some information could go on a secondary label on the back or bottom of the product, or on a hang tag instead.
Font choice matters a lot at small sizes. Thin, decorative fonts might look lovely on a business card, but they can become unreadable on a 50mm label. Stick with clean, well-spaced fonts for the body text and save any decorative fonts for the product name or brand. Make sure there’s enough contrast between the text colour and the background, too — light grey text on a white background won’t work in practice, however nice it looks on screen.
Test your labels by printing a sample at actual size before placing a big order. What looks fine on your computer screen often looks quite different when it’s stuck on a jar. Check that everything is legible, that the colours look right, and that the layout works on the actual product. It takes five minutes and it’s always worth doing. For related reading at a similar pace, a cohesive system from cards to packaging and packaging inserts in practice may help. If you would like to see curated sets in one place on the site, you can explore matching designs here.
Browse the range
You can find printed product labels ready to personalise in the Sunday Ambience collection on Zazzle. Have a look at the full stationery collections too — there are matching stickers, hang tags, and packaging bits to go with them.
