One common mistake in designing a web site is trying to fill up every itty bitty bit of space with something – whether it be information, pictures or advertisements.
I’ve found this especially holds true when the layout contains several vertical columns. Too often, the designer or the client become obsessed with filling up the length of each column in order to make them align at the bottom of the page. Their mentality is that the space is there, therefore, it should be put to good use.
The result, however, is not a pleasing, easy-on-your-eyes design, but a web site that looks cluttered and overwhelming. The web site visitor doesn’t know what to focus on because there are too many things vying for their attention. Their eyes dart over the page, anxiously looking for a place to rest and finding none.
It can be compared to a room in a home. Imagine for a moment, that you walk into a kitchen where the countertops are filled with small appliances and cluttered with utensils, dishes and cookbooks…all clean and neatly stacked, but in a state of chaos.
The floor space is cramped with tables and chairs, barstools are jammed together and pictures are tacked to every fillable space on the walls. Appealing? Not really. Is it a place that you want to hang out at? No, not at all.
Now imagine walking into a kitchen where the countertops are bare, with the exception of a few small appliances. The dishes, utensils and cookbooks are all neatly tucked away in the cupboards. A small table with several chairs adorns a corner of the room, allowing ample walking room throughout the kitchen. A single picture hangs on the wall.
Unlike the cluttered kitchen, this room evokes a sense of peace, organization and comfort. It draws you in, and it makes you feel relaxed, welcomed and “at home.”
White Space – an Important Design Principle
Empty space, known in design terms as negative space or white space (although it can be any color, not just white) , is as Martha Stewart would say, “a good thing.”
White space brings order and organization to a design. It prevents distractions by deflecting attention away from itself and towards what is important. It evokes a sense of simple elegance and increases online readability.
White space is not just allowing empty space in columns, but also consists of the empty space that surrounds blocks of text and other design elements.
A Good Example of a Web Site that Uses White Space
This web site of a Denver retaining wall builder does an excellent job of using white space:
- The left column contains a picture and the navigation – nothing else. There are no blinking advertisements or other attention-gobbling elements to steal away from the main text of the page.
- There is an ample amount of space cushioning the margins of the text and the pictures, allowing the eyes a place to rest and reducing eye strain.
- Bulleted text organizes points into easy to read chunks and are surrounded by extra white space for easy online reading.
The next time you are tempted to fill every bit of space on your web site, remember that the old adage “less is more” is a good rule to apply. Your customers will appreciate a web site that is easy on their eyes and may be more apt to stick around. And who doesn’t want a “sticky” a web site? 
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Hi Viki.
I don’t read cluttered sites — it’s like lots of people in the room talking at once, as at a TGIF party or really any well-attended party. The words all tumble over each other in space, and often what I hear is just gibberish, or at best amusing re-mixtures of what’s being said.
My dad had this same condition — both of us love people. We just like a few at a time…
White space matters — in many ways.
Hi Viki,
I’m having a real problem with this on the wordpress thing but will keep kicking at it until Wordpress’ ideas win out, most likely. Hah!. The site you did for the wall people is wonderfully clean and very readable. I’ll have to figure out how to get that to work on a dark page.
Good reminder that a touch of elegant presentation counts, thanks.
Cheers,
pete
Are you talking about me and my blog!? ;D I put all those purty pictures in my widgets, I feel compelled to add an image to every post…I wonder if there is a help group for us graphics obsessed people? I do agree, sort of, I keep my website tasteful, but I have a hard time controlling my graphics urges on my blog!
Anita
Barb, Wow, can I ever relate to tuning out white noise (white noise, unlike white space, is NOT a good thing). During my recent vacation to South Carolina, we ate out a lot, and every single restaurant we went to had music blasting in the background. Combine that with dozens of people talking and I ended up not being able to focus on much of anything.
Pete, I think it’s the nature of blogs to be a little bit more on the cluttered side and people have come to expect that. You can still use the same principles of white space, however, by making sure you allow plenty of white space around your text and images…and by keeping advertisements in the sidebars to a minimum (if applicable).
Anita, My friend, like I told Pete, you get a little more leeway with a blog, and an image with every post is perfectly acceptable in the blogosphere.
I love white space and am also a graphaholic. But I think we should be able to manage both at once. One of the areas that bothers me when people don’t use white space correctly is when they butt the text next to the image without any breathing room.
Adele, I agree. It not only looks awful when text is jammed up against an image, but it’s also hard to read the text.
It’s true. White space is something crucial to make readers feel more comfortable. Cluttered sites doesn’t impress clients, people won’t buy your products, so on.
Big, tough, cleanly separated parts, the use of grid principle, good contrast, low number of colors, font sizes and families are what make a web site look brilliant and enjoyable.
Ps: Subscirbe-to-comments won’t be a bad luck to install
Hi Webdev,
Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment. You brought up some good points, and those things also greatly contribute to a clean, enjoyable design. And yes, I agree, I need to install the subscribe to comments. Sometimes I need a good push.