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Discover beautiful fonts and perfect pairings for your next project. Browse 8,500+ fonts with accessibility ratings.

© 2026 TypeSmith · Robert David Orr

  1. Fonts
  2. /
  3. Handwriting
  4. /
  5. Dashley

Dashley

Dashley captures organic, human warmth with flowing strokes that add personality to your designs.

Scroll to explore
Handwritingby Brad Barnes65% Accessible
Characters256
Glyphs307
Typography Tools

Best Ways to Use Dashley

01

Best Font Pairings for Dashley

TypeSmith curates 3 expert font pairings for Dashley, including combinations with Tuccitana, Devroye and Mozilla Text.

Each pairing includes accessibility ratings, expert reasoning, and usage recommendations for web and print design.

Explore 3 Pairings for Dashley
02

Test Dashley Font Pairings Live

TypeSmith's interactive testing tool lets you preview Dashley with any font combination in real-time, optimized for handwriting characteristics.

Adjust font sizes, weights, and see live typography specimens including editorial layouts, code editors, and UI components.

Test Dashley Pairings Live

Character Set

Dashley Glyphs & Characters

Size48
Showing 62 of 187 charactersDouble-click to copy • Click for details
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789

Type Scale

Display Sizes for Dashley

Heading Level 1<h1>
64px
Bold
72px
Dashley primary headline
Heading Level 2<h2>
48px
SemiBold
56px
Dashley section heading
Heading Level 3<h3>
32px
Medium
40px
Dashley subsection title
Heading Level 4<h4>
24px
Regular
32px
Dashley content heading
Heading Level 5<h5>
18px
Regular
26px
Dashley minor heading
Heading Level 6<h6>
14px
Medium
20px
Dashley smallest heading
Font SizeWeightLine Height
Body Copy

Dashley Body Typography

TypeSmith provides optimized body text specifications for Dashley, including recommended sizes, line heights, and letter spacing for long-form content. These settings ensure maximum readability across devices and screen sizes.

Dashley demonstrates exceptional body text performance with balanced proportions and consistent stroke widths that enhance readability across paragraph lengths.

When setting Dashley for body copy, TypeSmith recommends these optimized specifications. The carefully tuned metrics ensure comfortable reading at extended lengths while maintaining the typeface's distinctive character.

Dashley small text sizes retain legibility through well-defined letterforms. Caption and footnote applications benefit from the font's clear x-height and open counters.

ElementWeightSizeLine HeightTrackingPreview
Body TextRegular16px24px0.5pxDashley delivers excellent readability for body copy
ItalicizedRegular Italic16px24px0.5pxDashley italic provides elegant emphasis
BoldBold16px24px0.5pxDashley bold creates strong visual hierarchy
Small CapsRegular16px24px0.5pxDashley typography specimen
Secondary TextMedium14px20px0.5pxDashley typography specimen
.your-class { font-family: 'Dashley'; }

Quick Start

Using Dashley in Your Design

HTML Link Tag

Add to your <head> section

<link href="https://fonts.bunny.net/css?family=Dashley:400,700&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

CSS @import

Add at top of your stylesheet

@import url('https://fonts.bunny.net/css?family=Dashley:400,700&display=swap');

CSS @font-face

Self-host the font files

@font-face {
  font-family: 'Dashley';
  src: url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Dashley:wght@400;700&display=swap');
  font-display: swap;
}

Implementation

Dashley CSS Implementation

Standard CSS

css

Apply directly to any CSS class or selector.

 1.my-text {
 2  font-family: 'Dashley', sans-serif;
 3  font-weight: 400;
 4}

SCSS Variable

scss

Define once, use throughout your stylesheet.

 1$font-primary: 'Dashley', sans-serif;
 2
 3.my-text {
 4  font-family: $font-primary;
 5}

Tailwind CSS

config

Configure once, apply with utility classes.

 1// tailwind.config.js
 2module.exports = {
 3  theme: {
 4    extend: {
 5      fontFamily: {
 6        'dashley': ['Dashley', 'sans-serif'],
 7      },
 8    },
 9  },
10}
11
12// Usage in HTML
13<p class="font-dashley">Your text here</p>

About

Inside Dashley

Brad Barnes
Handwriting
Open Source

Dashley font is a handwriting typeface with brush rough letterforms that streak with dashed, textured personality. Each character displays dash-like strokes with rough character suggesting quick marks and textured dashing. This brush rough style suits quick content, dash branding, and designs requiring typography with dashed, textured character. The dashley reference emphasizes quick strokes. For designers creating quick content, Dashley delivers appropriate dashed character. Complements textured palettes.

Dashley was crafted by Brad Barnes. The typeface brings careful attention to typographic detail, visible in its letterform construction and optical balance.

As a Handwriting typeface in the Vox-ATypI Scripts classification, Dashley features disconnected or loosely connected letterforms and irregular stroke weight from natural hand pressure. These optical characteristics make it well-suited for personal branding and lifestyle blogs.

Dashley is available in a single weight, offering focused typographic consistency for both digital and print applications, with 3 font pairings curated. Standard Latin character coverage serves the majority of Western typographic workflows.

Dashley

Typography Judgment

Expert Analysis of Dashley

TypeSmith evaluates every font across classification, accessibility, and design heritage. This analysis helps designers understand Dashley's strengths and ideal use cases before committing to a typography decision.

1

Classification

Handwriting analysis. Typographic analysis places Dashley within the Scripts (Casual / Handwritten) tradition, characterized by Disconnected or loosely connected letterforms and Irregular stroke weight from natural hand pressure. Handwriting fonts gained popularity in the 1990s digital type boom, offering an approachable alternative to formal scripts. Key technical strength: randomization features for natural variation per glyph.

2

Accessibility

Readability assessment (grade: 65). Dashley handles most reading scenarios adequately, with best results at sizes above 14 px on screen.

3

Design Heritage

Designed by Brad Barnes. The designer's attention to glyph proportions and optical balance produces a Handwriting with a single focused weight suited to both digital and print workflows.

Overview

About Dashley

Dashley represents a Scripts typeface, anchored in the tradition where handwriting fonts gained popularity in the 1990s digital type boom, offering an approachable alternative to formal scripts. Its distinctive disconnected or loosely connected letterforms and irregular stroke weight from natural hand pressure make it well-suited for personal branding and lifestyle blogs. TypeSmith features Dashley in a single weight variant and 3 curated font pairings.

Font Pairings Available
3 curated pairings for Dashley
View Pairings

Categories

Browse by Classification

DisplayHandwritingMonospaceSans SerifSerif

Explore More

If You Like Dashley, Try These

View all fonts

TypeSmith identifies 5 fonts with similar visual characteristics to Dashley based on classification, x-height ratio, and stroke weight. These alternatives maintain the same typographic personality while offering different weight options and language support.

Aa
Shadows Into Light
Handwriting
Aa
Shalimar
Handwriting
Aa
Gaegu
Handwriting
Aa
Gamja Flower
Handwriting
Aa
Engagement
Handwriting

Inclusive Design

Accessibility & Usability

65
Accessibility Score
Good Accessibility

Using Dashley Accessibly

Dashley falls in the moderate accessibility tier, working best at medium-to-large sizes where its letterforms remain clearly differentiated. Irregular baselines and inconsistent letter spacing can hinder readers with visual processing differences. Maintain generous line height and avoid setting below 16 px.

How Legible is Dashley?

Dashley draws legibility from its disconnected or loosely connected letterforms and irregular stroke weight from natural hand pressure. These characteristics help readers distinguish similar glyphs such as I, l, and 1 at a range of sizes.

Readability Profile: Dashley

More legible than formal scripts due to disconnected letters, but the irregular baseline limits sustained reading. Best at medium sizes for short passages. Use at 16 px minimum for body text, and maintain 1.5 line-height to support comfortable reading rhythm.

Dashley: Comfort in Extended Reading

Dashley provides a focused weight range that maintains consistent typographic color across paragraphs. Balanced stroke modulation keeps visual noise low during sustained reading sessions.

Dashley Accessibility Recommendations

Maintain a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for body text and 3:1 for large text when setting Dashley. Use font sizes of at least 16 px for paragraph copy and line spacing of 1.5 or greater. Test Dashley at 200% browser zoom to confirm line breaks and layout integrity remain intact.

Getting the Most from Dashley

Combine with a geometric sans-serif for modern contrast or a clean slab serif for grounded warmth. Avoid pairing with script or calligraphic faces. A focused set of pairings helps designers find compatible companions for Dashley. Establish hierarchy through size, spacing, and color rather than multiplying font families. Serve Dashley in WOFF2 format for optimal load performance and broad browser compatibility.

Get the Font

Dashley Font Files

Available Weights

400
Regular
Local
400
Regular Italic
Local
700
Bold
Local
700
Bold Italic
Local

Weight Reference

Aa
100
Aa
200
Aa
300
Aa
400
Aa
500
Aa
600
Aa
700
Aa
800
Aa
900

Internationalization

Dashley Multilingual Support

Extended Latin Coverage
Supports 100+ languages with Latin script

Western European

  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Spanish
  • Italian
  • Portuguese
  • Dutch

Nordic

  • Swedish
  • Norwegian
  • Danish
  • Finnish
  • Icelandic

Central European

  • Polish
  • Czech
  • Hungarian
  • Romanian
  • Slovak

Baltic

  • Lithuanian
  • Latvian
  • Estonian

This font encodes 93 glyphs covering Latin. Text outside these ranges falls back to another face in the stack.

Legal

Font License Details

SIL Open Font License (OFL) 1.1
Free for personal and commercial use
View License

What you can do

  • Personal projects
  • Commercial projects
  • Web embedding
  • App embedding
  • Modification
  • Redistribution

Restrictions

  • Selling as standalone

Modified versions must use a different name and be distributed under the same OFL license.

Dashley is available under the SIL Open Font License (OFL), Version 1.1. This license is a free, libre, and open source license specifically designed for fonts and related software. The OFL allows the fonts to be used, studied, modified, and redistributed freely as long as they are not sold by themselves. This makes Dashley ideal for web projects, applications, documents, and print materials of any kind.