What Do You Need to Know About Whitespace in Web Design?

Creating visually appealing, highly functional websites is the need of the hour for brands to achieve success in a competitive digital world. While there are many tactics at their disposal to do so, whitespace is something web designers should definitely consider to achieve their purpose. Let’s get to know more about it here.

Whitespace, also called negative space, is essentially the part of a page that’s left unmarked. It is the empty space of a page that is left blank. When it comes to web design, it is the space left between columns, margins, text, graphics, images, and other design elements. This space of the web page is left untouched to smoothen things out and add elegance and visual appeal to the page.

Whitespace in web design reminds designers that simpler, uncluttered designs are extremely beautiful. It shows that there’s no need to come up with a web design layout that’s filled with excess text and redundant graphics to send across a direct and eloquent message.

Whitespace is quite an essential element in web design, and there are good reasons for the same. If used correctly and properly, whitespace can completely transform your design and offer many benefits to your website. Here are a few of them –

1. Tidies up your website

The first impression of your website is of utmost importance. It determines whether or not your visitors choose to stay on it. Solid layouts and appealing color schemes certainly add to the first impression of your website. However, adding whitespace to the design is particularly crucial because it shows finesse and creativity. Contrary to what you may be thinking, adding whitespace to your website does not make it look dull and minimalistic. Instead, using it correctly will definitely add a touch of elegance and superiority to your design.

2. Increased legibility of content

When users visit your website, they should be able to see how and where they are navigating clearly. They should get enough reason to stay on your website and keep reading your content. Believe it or not, adding whitespace between paragraphs and around text and images helps website visitors comprehend what they are reading. In short, it creates a better user experience.

3. Increased interaction

Website visitors always tend to rush through when surfing through web pages. As such, having a good degree of whitespace in your design will boost interaction by eliminating distracting elements that slow your visitor down and ruin their experience. Even adding minor padding around your design elements can help draw their attention to a specific area of your website to a great extent.

4. Highlights your call to action (CTA)

CTAs are of great significance to websites because they invite website visitors to take action, either to make a purchase or subscribe to an email list. It should be clear to the eye. More often than not, an obvious way to make your CTA stand out is to make it appear larger. You can either make images or buttons bigger in size. But, surrounding these elements with whitespace is sure to prove very effective.

5. Creates proper balance

It’s important for you as a web designer to strike a balance between various elements of your web design. Having too little whitespace can lead to disorganization, confusion, and unreliability. You certainly don’t want to showcase your brand with such negative qualities, right? On the flip side, having too much whitespace in your design could indicate that you lack content and user guidance. Hence, you should strike a balance of whitespace in your web design. Let whitespace be a great tool to separate chunks of content so that there’s easy accessibility and the user experience of your website can be enhanced.

If you wish to include whitespace in your web design, you should start considering every small to big detail of a web page to deliver a better result. Think about your page’s header, footer, margins, menus, items in a list, images, and captions, and texts. Take all of these elements into account and leave more untouched space between them. Keep in mind that you want to come up with something elegant and distinct while improving the user experience of your website.

A good user experience means allowing elements more space to breathe. As such, you should know that placing text in 11px font style and cramming the overall design right into the bottom of the webpage won’t deliver the experience your website’s visitors look for. Here are a few additional tips to consider while using whitespace in your web design:

1. Be wise with your whitespace

Whitespace is the culmination of open and clear area around your design elements. It is not necessarily making use of the color white. The physiological effect of using it is a comfortable feeling for your website’s visitors. Here’s a tip: leave bigger chunks of whitespace around the essential parts of your page to make it stand out. The same principles apply when designing pages on a black or dark-colored background. However, the overall feel that a dark background gives is different from that created by a white background. Having an ample amount of space around elements on a dark background creates a sense of excitement and drama.

2. Allow some page elements to float

Web page layouts are fairly boxy and geometric. Albeit it’s usually a good idea to align all your page elements to a grid, it can make your page look somewhat rigid. To increase visual appeal and interest, you should add some degree of fun with one of the more crucial elements on your page. Let an important element on your page to deviate from the rules by falling out of the grid. It can surely make it stand out from the rest.

3. Know that less is more in web design

Last but not least, the less you have on your web page, the easier it is to add whitespace and floating elements that break from the conventional and rigid grid. You should consider limiting the amount of detail of the less important elements on your page. This will allow you to save that detail for another page on your website that focuses more on that element.