Instagram stories might look simple, but don’t let them fool you — they’re a powerful part of a social media strategy. Instagram Story templates help you produce high-quality content daily, leveraging the visibility boost of daily posting.
Templates are easy to use, versatile, customizable, and can save you tons of time. They help you wrap your video, photo, or quiz in a branded wrapper to boost brand awareness and stay consistent. However, template overuse might make your feed a little dull, so remember to personalize them to fit your brand and browse new ones occasionally.
In this article, I’ve included 42 free Instagram story templates for you to find some inspiration. Let’s get started!
What are Instagram story templates?
Instagram Story templates are pre-designed graphics and layouts that users can customize to create beautiful Instagram Stories. These templates help social media managers save time and create cohesive brand assets to maintain the brand’s style even without extensive design experience.
Canva is among the most popular design tools that provide templates for social media assets, including Stories. Available on desktop, iOS, and Android, Canva is beloved by many social media marketers.
Instagram story templates – edit in Canva, schedule in Planable
When it comes to batch-creating graphic assets, templates are a lifesaver. If you’re a social media manager first and designer second, Canva is your best friend.
Being a simple drag-and-drop designer tool, Canva offers a whole set of easy tools to create and edit visuals. Together with Planable’s social media savvy designer, we’ve created a library of different templates for Instagram Stories to make your design process quick and painless. All the IG Story templates have a fixed aspect ratio of 9×16 and include tons of customizable elements. You can tailor them to your brand from head to toe — or rather, from color to font.
Planable and Canva are a power duo for delivering beautiful, engaging content to your followers. Using Planable’s integration with Canva, you can easily import designs from Canva into Planable’s media library and set your posts to go live on Instagram and seven other social media platforms.
Export Instagram story from Canva to Planable
So, how do you create IG stories from a template?
- Browse Canva’s library and choose a template you like — check out these templates for inspiration.
- Personalize the template to fit your brand’s style: change the colors and add text, stickers, shapes, and logos.
- Export your design from Canva to Planable’s media library.
- Approve, plan, and schedule your beautiful Stories through Planable.
Easy-peasy!
Now, let’s dive into the beautiful templates that’ll elevate your Instagram Story game. Find them all here.
Contents
1. Teasers and announcements Instagram story templates
Ideal for creating a buzz, teaser and announcement templates are designed to grab attention and build anticipation. Whether you’re hinting at a new product launch, revealing an upcoming event, or posting exciting brand news, these outlines are your go-to.
They often feature bold text, eye-catching colors, and dynamic animated elements to make your message pop. Customize them with your images and specific details about your announcement, add countdown stickers, and tailor the colors and fonts to align with your brand identity.
2. Conversation starter Instagram story templates
Conversation starter templates are all about sparking engagement and dialogue with your followers. Perfect for Q&A sessions, polls, or gathering opinions, these story outlines invite interaction through thought-provoking questions or prompts.
This is a great excuse to utilize Instagram stories’ “Add Yours” function allowing people to use your template to fill in their answers.
3. Interactive Instagram story templates
Similar to conversation starters, this type of template encourages your followers to engage with your content directly. The template comes with placeholders for interactive elements, so you’ll have to add the actual polls, Q&A fields, and sliders directly in the Instagram app.
This allows you to harness Instagram’s native engaging tools while maintaining your brand aesthetics through the color palette, brand typography, interactive details, and more.
4. Cute Instagram story templates
Cute Instagram story templates are your go-to for adding a touch of warmth to your feed. They’re ideal for behind-the-scenes moments, fun team gatherings, and user testimonials. Instagram is all about cute photos and videos — so use this template to show your brand’s whimsical side.
Take one of the ready-made templates, tweak it with your brand colors and fonts, add a nice photo or video, and throw in some cheerful tunes. Music is a great way to contribute to your light-hearted storytelling, so don’t overlook it!
5. Educational Instagram story templates
Educational Instagram story templates are designed to inform and enlighten your users. Ideal for posting a “tip of the day”, trivia, insightful facts about your products, or industry updates, these outlines make learning engaging.
These templates feature clear, readable fonts and layouts highlighting key information, making complex ideas easily digestible. Work them with your brand’s colors, add relevant pictures or charts, and a quiz or poll to make the educational content more interactive and memorable.
6. Cool Instagram story templates
IG stories are a fun and easy way to maintain your daily presence on the platform even when you don’t have a specific agenda. Don’t know what to post? Create a pretty post with a cool story template!
Use this template for anything from a casual “good morning” post and snapshots of your daily routine to spontaneous shoutouts or simply sharing a favorite quote or mood of the day.
7. Instagram story templates for business
Instagram story templates for businesses are designed to cater to professional new beats, such as the start of sales, the launch of the latest collections, the introduction of a team member, or job openings.
These templates combine concise, structured info with brand assets. Add your business logo, brand colors, and specific content details to stay within the brand theme.
8. Creative Instagram story templates
Creative Instagram story templates help you make a bold statement and let your message truly pop, even if you’re not that great at creative design from scratch. These templates break the mold with their unusual layouts, vibrant color schemes, and exciting use of fonts and images.
Easily customizable, these templates empower you to express your unique style and catch your audience’s eye.
9. Instagram stories ad templates
This set is specifically crafted to fit the format of Instagram stories ads. Use these templates to promote products, special offers, or events.
With a focus on high-impact visuals and clear call-to-action buttons, they’re designed for conversion. Tweak these templates using your product images, color palette, and messaging to align with your marketing goals, making your ads memorable and effective.
10. Modern Instagram story templates
Modern Instagram story templates are designed for the contemporary creator, blending sleek layouts with cutting-edge design.
Ideal for lifestyle brands or individuals who aim for a bold and polished image, these templates feature minimalist backgrounds, allowing your content to take center stage. Mix them with your images or videos for an effortlessly chic look.
11. Aesthetic Instagram story templates
Instagram values a pretty picture, and there are brands and creators whose core offer is aesthetics. Aesthetic Instagram story templates offer a cohesive look that resonates with your personal or brand identity.
These templates are perfect for those who prioritize visual harmony. Feel free to play around with your photos, texts, and GIFs to make a memorable statement.
12. Q&A Instagram story templates
Looking for a way to boost interaction and deepen connections with your audience? The answer is Q&A. You can use these templates to encourage free-flowing communication through Instagram’s native ‘Ask me a question’ sticker or leverage this form to share your personal insights, present an interview, or offer tips.
13. Shoutout Instagram story templates
These templates are perfect for amplifying your statement, whether it’s a last call, big news, or a limited offer like an early bird discount. Designed to catch the eye, they feature bold text, clear structure, and space for visuals that you can change to your liking.
Use them to generate buzz and encourage immediate action.
14. Quotes Instagram story templates
Share snippets of wisdom, humor, or inspiration with style. These templates offer an elegant background and typography, making it easy to overlay your chosen quotes in a beautiful and readable way.
Work on colors and fonts to match your mood or theme. Great for posting an interview quote, life lessons, or light-hearted moments, this format gives you a solid piece of content with little to no additional workload.
Create Instagram stories that resonate with your audience
Instagram stories are a handy tool for maintaining a brand’s narrative on the platform. Templates make it easier: they streamline the content creation process and ensure that each story reflects your brand’s unique identity and values. You save time and effort when creating bite-sized pieces of branded content.
By adapting the templates to fit your messages and vision, you create a recognizable and cohesive brand image that speaks directly to your customers. Combined with Instagram’s native interactive tools, such as polls, quizzes, and Q&As, stories are key to engaging your audience in a dialogue.
Instagram content creation in Planable
To optimize your social media success even further, try Planable. Its Canva integration allows you to import all your star designs directly to your workspace, where you and your colleagues can collaborate, plan, and schedule content for Instagram and other major social media platforms.
Use Planable’s 50 free posts to give it a try. The smoothest content flow from a template to the hearts of your followers awaits!
FAQ about IG Story Templates
How do you get templates for Instagram stories?
To get templates for Instagram stories, you can hire a dedicated designer to create a set of unique frames tailored to your style, giving your stories a distinctive look. You can also utilize free customizable templates in Canva to make them match your brand identity.
Explore our compilation of free Instagram story templates and start creating!
How do I use IG templates?
The best way to utilize IG templates is through a design tool like Canva. Open Canva from the web or mobile device, choose Templates, and browse various frames for IG Stories, posts, and Reels. Choose the one you like and adjust it to fit your brand.
When you’re ready, download your design and publish it on Instagram. Or, export your design directly to Planable through its Canva integration and schedule it to go live in Planable’s content calendar.
Content marketer with a background in journalism; digital nomad, and tech geek. In love with blogs, storytelling, strategies, and old-school Instagram. If it can be written, I probably wrote it.
