Mastering Web Design: How to use White Space

Good web design doesn’t draw people into your site, it keeps them there looking through the site. Creating a responsive and aesthetically pleasing website is often difficult to get down, there is no exact science to making things look good. But there are many guidelines that can help you get as close as you can to that perfect webpage you’re chasing, and one of those techniques is learning how to use white space.

What is White Space?

White space is a web design term for space on a page that is literally void of any content, the empty space on your website. While having lots of content is good, and having the skill to position it around the web page is even more so, you don’t need your site to be cluttered to the nines in a layout that’s going to make your visitors fall back in their chair due to sensory overload.

How do you use it?

It works on the same principle as breaking for new paragraphs in writing. People look at a giant block of text and they already don’t want to have read through it, but if you space your content out in a comprehensive manner then people feel it’s easier to look at and read through. You don’t need to put all your content in one place, choosing to feature the most important stuff up front so when people are skimming through they see the best of what you have to offer, and if you find a good way to display that visually then you’ll have a lot fewer people leaving your site after the first three seconds.

White space is also good for highlighting a part of the page you want people to see. You could just bold everything and make the font huge, but you can get a greater emphasis if you just surround it by a little white space, in this way you can also direct users to other parts of your website and create a path that you want them to follow through your content. Utilizing white space properly adds flow to your site, it makes people want to read through your content, it adds to the user experience and leaves them wanting more.

There are a lot of advantages to formatting your white space, this site lists them more in-depth.

An Example of White Space

For example, look at the top search engine in the world: Google. Their home page consists of their logo and a search bar to type in, the rest of that page is white space. It’s just a big empty white page with the main function in the middle of it all, as simple as can be. But it’s that simplicity that not only makes for a visually pleasing page, but it’s what makes it iconic. The Google logo is the center for a lot of what goes on online, it’s the reason they keep putting up different versions of it to celebrate weird and quirky holidays and anniversaries.

There are plenty more examples of good white space all over the web, this site lists some good ones.

If you want more help with anything in web design and website development, contact us. Our team centered in Charleston SC can help you with what you need.