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/Tailwind CSS

Use the spacing key in the theme section of your tailwind.config.js file to customize Tailwind’s default spacing/sizing scale.

tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    spacing: {
      '1': '8px',
      '2': '12px',
      '3': '16px',
      '4': '24px',
      '5': '32px',
      '6': '48px',
    }
  }
}

By default the spacing scale is inherited by the padding, margin, width, height, maxHeight, gap, inset, space, and translate core plugins.

Extending the default spacing scale

As described in the theme documentation, if you’d like to extend the default spacing scale, you can do so using the theme.extend.spacing section of your tailwind.config.js file:

tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    extend: {
      spacing: {
        '13': '3.25rem',
        '15': '3.75rem',
        '128': '32rem',
        '144': '36rem',
      }
    }
  }
}

This will generate classes like p-13, m-15, and h-128 in addition to all of Tailwind’s default spacing/sizing utilities.

Overriding the default spacing scale

As described in the theme documentation, if you’d like to override the default spacing scale, you can do so using the theme.spacing section of your tailwind.config.js file:

tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    spacing: {
      sm: '8px',
      md: '12px',
      lg: '16px',
      xl: '24px',
    }
  }
}

This will disable Tailwind’s default spacing scale and generate classes like p-sm, m-md, w-lg, and h-xl instead.

Default spacing scale

By default, Tailwind includes a generous and comprehensive numeric spacing scale. The values are proportional, so 16 is twice as much spacing as 8 for example. One spacing unit is equal to 0.25rem, which translates to 4px by default in common browsers.

Name Size Pixels Preview
0 0px 0px
px 1px 1px
0.5 0.125rem 2px
1 0.25rem 4px
1.5 0.375rem 6px
2 0.5rem 8px
2.5 0.625rem 10px
3 0.75rem 12px
3.5 0.875rem 14px
4 1rem 16px
5 1.25rem 20px
6 1.5rem 24px
7 1.75rem 28px
8 2rem 32px
9 2.25rem 36px
10 2.5rem 40px
11 2.75rem 44px
12 3rem 48px
14 3.5rem 56px
16 4rem 64px
20 5rem 80px
24 6rem 96px
28 7rem 112px
32 8rem 128px
36 9rem 144px
40 10rem 160px
44 11rem 176px
48 12rem 192px
52 13rem 208px
56 14rem 224px
60 15rem 240px
64 16rem 256px
72 18rem 288px
80 20rem 320px
96 24rem 384px