How to Change Stroke Thickness in Adobe Illustrator

Tim Youngs
Last updated February 21, 2024

When working within Adobe Illustrator, you'll find yourself using strokes all the time.

Strokes (or lines) are a great way to add an extra layer of detail to a project, so, knowing how to work with strokes is very important.

In this mini tutorial, we will cover the basics of adding a stroke and changing a stroke's width in Illustrator.

Here's how to do it:

Saving a New Swatch

  1. Open your Illustrator project file
  2. Select or create a stroke or stroked object
  3. Open the Stroke panel (Window > Stoke), and adjust the stroke Weight up or down as desired
  4. From the Tools Panel (on the left), select the Width Tool (Shortcut W)
  5. With the stroke highlighted in the Document window (main working area), click-and-drag any point along the stroke to increase or decrease just one section of the stroke thickness.