{"id":16467,"date":"2017-04-21T16:05:59","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T10:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.resellerclub.com\/?p=16467"},"modified":"2026-05-22T11:47:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T11:47:26","slug":"importance-of-white-space-in-web-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resellerclub.com\/blog\/importance-of-white-space-in-web-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Importance of White space in Web Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blast from the Past<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

For years, whitespace in design has been branded as \u2018too plain\u2019 or \u2018lack of design\u2019 and is even called negative space and something to avoid. This trend of thought was so common in web design, that even the best of the best brands crammed everything in design to avoid whitespace. Take a look at Apple\u2019s website from the 90\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Web design in the early days including filling up negative space with gifs, table layouts to organise content, text, animated text, page hit counters etc. <\/span><\/p>\n

With the early 2000s, came increased CSS support that allowed separation of content and design. This made website maintenance easier due to reduced complexity, quicker load speeds, greater flexibility and gave room for content to be developed independent of design. <\/span><\/p>\n

The understanding of white space grew. Garish, neon buttons were replaced with blending colours, icons replaced text, resolution and pixelation were concerns, and placement of content grew. It was the budding era of minimalism.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Difference between Minimalism and White space<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Come late 2000\u2019s, designs became sleek, intuitive and clean. Today, along with minimalism has come the understanding of whitespace and the importance of it in web design. While there is an overlap of what minimalism and whitespace is, I think the difference, between the two simply put, is that <\/span>minimalism is the focus on the hero element<\/b> with use of an outline or minimum detail while white space is the important (and in most cases, background) space that enhances the hero element<\/strong>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take an example:<\/span><\/p>\n

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In this poster, we can clearly conclude that it\u2019s minimalistic design, the hero element being the Aladdin outline while the negative space, enhances the hero image to make it stand out. Our <\/span>earlier blog on Minimalism<\/span><\/a> tells you how to incorporate minimalism in design.<\/span><\/p>\n

Importance of White space<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

As you can tell from the Aladdin example above, white space is important to make the hero element stand out but there are other purposes white space serves:<\/span><\/p>\n