React Bootstrap Spacing

React Spacing - Bootstrap 4 & Material Design

Note: This documentation is for an older version of Bootstrap (v.4). A newer version is available for Bootstrap 5. We recommend migrating to the latest version of our product - Material Design for Bootstrap 5.
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React Bootstrap spacing is a utility which assigns responsive margin or padding classes to elements to modify its display position.

Bootstrap includes a wide range of shorthand responsive margin and padding utility classes to modify an element’s appearance.

Assign responsive-friendly margin or padding values to an element or a subset of its sides with shorthand classes. Includes support for individual properties, all properties, and vertical and horizontal properties. Classes are built from a default Sass map ranging from .25rem to 3rem.

Notation

Spacing utilities that apply to all breakpoints, from xs to xl, have no breakpoint abbreviation in them. This is because those classes are applied from min- width: 0 and up, and thus are not bound by a media query. The remaining breakpoints, however, do include a breakpoint abbreviation.

The classes are named using the format {property}{sides}-{size} for xs and {property}{sides}-{breakpoint}-{size} for sm, md, lg, and xl.

Where property is one of:

Examples

Here are some representative examples of these classes:

        
            
          .mt-0 {
            margin-top: 0 !important;
          }

          .ml-1 {
            margin-left: ($spacer-x * .25) !important;
          }

          .px-2 {
            padding-left: ($spacer-x * .5) !important;
            padding-right: ($spacer-x * .5) !important;
          }

          .p-3 {
            padding: $spacer-y $spacer-x !important;
          }
        
        
    

Responsive spacing

The above mentioned notation includes the breakpoint value and as such allows us to apply spacing responsively. It means that you can condition spacing of elements depending on the type of display used - similarly to logic found in display property.

Let's say you want to prepare a fully responsive navbar. Some elements within may require setting them a bit further apart by applying additional margin - with .ml-3, for example. All looks good while the containing element stays horizonal, but once the viewport gets narrower and the .nav-items align vertically, the spacing utility used becomes obsolete (as the item is pushed to the right and stands out). The solution here is setting a responsive spacing utility - one that appears only when you really want it to.

Consider the table below:

        
            
          import React from 'react'
          import { MDBContainer } from 'mdbreact';

          const SpacingPage = () => {
            return (
              <MDBContainer>
                <p>This is a regularly spaced paraph.</p>
                <p className="ml-5 ml-lg-0">And this one has left margin visible on xs, sm and md displays.</p>
              </MDBContainer>
            )
          }

          export default SpacingPage;
        
        
    

Horizontal centering

Additionally, Bootstrap also includes an .mx-auto class for horizontally centering fixed-width block level content—that is, content that has display: block and a width set—by setting the horizontal margins to auto.

        
            
          import React from 'react'
          import { MDBContainer } from 'mdbreact';

          const SpacingPage = () => {
            return (
              <MDBContainer>
                <div className="mx-auto">
                  Centered element
                </div>
              </MDBContainer>
            )
          }

          export default SpacingPage;
        
        
    

        
            
          .container div {
            width: 200px; background-color: rgba(86,61,124,.15);
          }
        
        
    

Negative margin

In CSS, margin properties can utilize negative values (padding cannot). As of 4.2, Bootstrap’ve added negative margin utilities for every non-zero integer size listed above (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). These utilities are ideal for customizing grid column gutters across breakpoints.

The syntax is nearly the same as the default, positive margin utilities, but with the addition of n before the requested size. Here’s an example class that’s the opposite of .mt-1:

        
            
          .mt-n1 {
            margin-top: -0.25rem !important;
          }
        
        
    

Here’s an example of customizing the Bootstrap grid at the medium (md) breakpoint and above. We’ve increased the .col padding with .px-md-5 and then counteracted that with .mx-md-n5 on the parent .row.

        
            
            import React from 'react'
            import { MDBContainer, MDBRow, MDBCol } from 'mdbreact';
    
            const SpacingPage = () => {
              return (
                <MDBContainer>
                  <MDBRow className="mx-md-n5">
                    <MDBCol size="6" className="py-3 px-md-5">Custom column padding</MDBCol>
                    <MDBCol size="6" className="py-3 px-md-5">Custom column padding</MDBCol>
                  </MDBRow>
                </MDBContainer>
              )
            }
    
            export default SpacingPage;