How to Customize WooCommerce Order Emails

WooCommerce’s default order emails are functional but generic. There are three ways to customize them, in order of how much control (and effort) each gives you.

1. Built-in settings (colors, sender details, logo)

Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Emails. Here you’ll find the list of email templates (New Order, Processing Order, Completed Order, etc.) and, under the main Emails tab, options for the header image, base color, and footer text that apply across all of them. This covers basic branding without touching any code.

2. Hooks — add content without touching templates

For adding content (a thank-you note, a coupon, extra order info) rather than restructuring layout, hooks are less work to maintain than a full template override — they survive WooCommerce updates without needing to be re-diffed against the new core template. The ones you’ll actually use:

• woocommerce_email_before_order_table / woocommerce_email_after_order_table — add content directly above or below the order items table
• woocommerce_email_order_meta — the standard place to append custom order meta to the email

add_action( 'woocommerce_email_after_order_table', function( $order, $sent_to_admin, $plain_text, $email ) {
    if ( $sent_to_admin || $plain_text ) {
        return;
    }
    echo '<p>Thank you for your order! Questions? Reply to this email.</p>';
}, 10, 4 );

3. Template override — full layout control

For structural changes (not just adding content), copy the specific template file you need from WooCommerce’s own /templates/emails/ directory into your theme, following WooCommerce’s documented path: [your-theme]/woocommerce/emails/ — same filename, same relative structure, just without the /templates/ segment. On this site that means placing it under the Avada Child Theme’s folder so it survives parent theme updates. Only copy the specific file(s) you’re changing, not the whole emails directory — a full copy means every WooCommerce core update to that template silently stops reaching you, and WooCommerce will flag outdated template copies in the System Status report after an update, which is worth checking after any WooCommerce upgrade.

4. Plugin route

If you’d rather not touch code at all, WooCommerce Email Customizer and YayMail both give you a visual editor for restyling the default templates without hooks or template files.

Before you consider it done

Send test messages for every status you’ve customized — new, processing, completed, refunded, and failed orders all use different templates. Check the plain-text version (WooCommerce sends both HTML and plain-text automatically), not just the HTML rendering, and never put sensitive payment details in an email body. If you need to pull order data programmatically for any of this, see our WooCommerce order data reference.