A short guide to white space

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. Everything we would tell a client about white space in the time it takes to drink a coffee.

The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

Why it matters

Space is what makes a dense page feel calm. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

Where to start

Grouping related elements matters more than adding padding everywhere. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

Common failure modes

Cramped layouts read as cheap even when the design is good. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

What this looks like day to day

Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. Three things worth confirming about white space before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Cramped layouts read as cheap even when the design is good — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.