Warm regards meaning: friendly good wishes

Good wishes from someone you know

Warm regards says the writer likes you, or has at least met you. It keeps the shape of a business sign-off and adds one word of feeling. A dictionary lists it as a polite way to finish a letter, with kind regards and plain regards as synonyms. Among the sign-offs in the plain-English jargon dictionary, it sits at the friendly end.

The warmth is the point and the risk. To a colleague who covered your shift, it reads as thanks. To a stranger, it reads like the first email of a sales sequence.

Warm regards against best and kind

Best regards is the default, safe for anyone. Kind regards is polite and slightly formal. Warm regards moves past both into personal territory. Warmest regards goes further still, into the range of old friends and retirement cards.

Two neighbours share its mood without the regards. All the best wishes luck as well as goodwill, usually on the way out. Cheers is the casual version, for the same people on a busier day. If none of these fits the mood, email sign-offs are sorted by tone, from best regards to unhinged.

Warmest regards and other upgrades

Warmest regards is the superlative, one notch up. Warm wishes drops the regards and drifts toward a greeting card. December brings the seasonal versions: warm wishes for the holidays, warm regards and a happy new year. Each step up is fine with someone you know well and a little much with someone you don’t.

The people it suits best:

• The colleague who covered for you.
• A client after a project that went well.
• A former manager who wrote you a reference.
• Someone you met at a conference and would happily meet again.

Thank-yous, births and condolences

The US Navy’s correspondence manual lists suggested closings for personal letters from its headquarters. Warm regards is the one it gives for thank-you notes, birth announcements and condolences. Sincerely and all the best cover everyone else.

The same manual hands out very respectfully by rank, so the Navy keeps one closing for seniority and another for feelings. Both are in writing, with paragraph numbers.

Warm regards after a loss

The condolence email is where the sign-off matters most. When a colleague loses someone, a short note ending in warm regards, or with sympathy, says enough. Leave the work questions out of the same email. They can wait a week.

Sixth in the friendliness vote

In a vote of 1,000 UK workers on the friendliest closings, warm regards finished sixth. It beat all the best, seventh, and best regards, ninth. Kind regards didn’t place, so in this family the warmer the word, the higher it finished.

Cheers came fourth, ahead of every regards. In British offices, a word from the pub outranks a word from the letter-writing guide.

Warmth on a cold email

Warm regards also made a list of email phrases that make people want to scream, at number ten, tied with kind regards. The complaint was about context: after a hostile paragraph, a friendly closing makes the hostility worse.

Warm regards under “as discussed three times” is a smile at the end of a telling-off. The reader remembers the smile. If the email is a complaint, sign it with best regards and let the facts do the talking. How to professionally say can fix the paragraph above it.

Warm regards from a stranger

A cold sales email signed warm regards gets noticed for the wrong reason. Warmth with no meeting behind it is a hug at the door from someone you can’t place. A cold-email guide advises against it in a first contact, since warmth needs a relationship to stand on. On a mass mailing with your first name merged in, it’s the warmth of a spreadsheet.

The same goes inside a company. A first email to a director in another division doesn’t need warm regards. Best regards does the job and claims nothing.

Warmth that stops

The opposite move is louder. A colleague who has signed warm regards for a year and switches to regards has said something without writing it. Everyone copied in will spot the drop, and nobody will mention it. The trip back up is slower: getting from regards to warm regards again takes a fixed problem, an apology or a very good lunch.

Warm regards on a thank-you email

Subject: Thank you for Thursday

Hi Sam, thank you for taking the Hartley call while I was off sick. The client wrote this morning to say it was the clearest update they’ve had all year. Coffee is on me next week.

Warm regards Owe you one, Lena