White Space for Rent

Web Design February 05, 2008

White space is important when reading an online or printed document. It gives the reader some breathing room, a place for the eyes to rest. A lot of sites can overcomplicate their interfaces with too many colors, text and graphics and while this can be visually appealing, it can also be chaotic.

Here are some ideas on how to increase the white space on your site:

1) Increase the line-height in your stylesheet. Using a slightly-higher-than-default line height can give just enough of a subtle hint of space to make your content read better.

2) Add bottom margins to your paragraphs. Not only does this help to separate each block of text more clearly, but it adds to the overall readability.

3) Create padding around the outer edges of your page. Some sites have text that goes right up to the sides of your browser window. Adding a couple dozen pixels of space not only focuses your content, but it gives a nice border around everything.

4) Leave padding and margins around images. If you're using floating images in paragraphs, add a hefty portion of padding. No one says you need the text to come right up to the image border. The added white space will help emphasize your image more.

Don't be confused and think that the concept of "whitespace" only applies to the color. Whitespace can be anything - any "dead" space devoid of images and/or text. Don't go overboard with your spacing either. Text with too much leading and too much kerning (letter-spacing) can inhibit readability.

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