Lab website templates: choosing a design that fits your field

A template sets the first impression of your lab. The right one looks credible, reads easily and fits the culture of your field.

What makes a good academic template

• Readable typography. A serif for headings and a clean sans-serif for text reads as scholarly without feeling old.
• Room for figures. Research is visual; the template should give images space.
• Structured pages. People, publications and research areas should be real lists, not free-form text.
• Fast and mobile-friendly. Many visitors arrive from a phone after a talk.
• Accessible. Good contrast, alt text and keyboard navigation.

Matching the field

• Chemistry and materials — crisp layouts, structure images, a periodic or molecular motif.
• Biology and medicine — microscopy imagery, warm colour, clear team pages.
• Neuroscience — dark, high-contrast layouts that suit imaging data.
• Physics and engineering — minimal grids, monospace accents, plots.
• Plant and ecology — natural palettes, field photography.

Templates that change with you

Your lab will outgrow a template. Choose a builder where you can switch designs without re-entering content. In Labsite, the content (people, papers, news) is separate from the design, so you can try every template — including field-specific ones for chemistry, neuroscience, nanoscience, drug discovery and plant genetics — and switch with one click.

Browse the templates or see an example lab.