Recently, I saw someone asked on Reddit what others are using these days for full-bleed and breakout elements. This refers to having a main content area of limited width (usually centered), but having the ability for some elements to be wider, either all the way to the browser edges or somewhere in-between.
Is it still the old method that involves stretching elements to 100vw and then moving them in the negative direction of the x axis via an offset, margin, or translation?
Or is it the newer method that involves a grid with a limited width main column in the middle then symmetrical columns on the sides, with elements spanning an odd number of columns that depends on whether we want them to have the normal width of the main column or we want them a bit wider, breaking out of that or we even want them to be full-bleed?
There is no perfectly right answer. It depends on use case and how you look at it. We’re going to look at modified and combined versions and essentially achieve what we need to depending on the situation with modern CSS.
The old method described in the 2016 CSS-Tricks article has the disadvantage of relying on a Firefox bug (that has been fixed since 2017) to work well in all situations. The problem is that 100vw doesn’t take into account any vertical scrollbars we might have (and no, the new viewport units don’t solve that problem either). This leads to the 100vw width elements being wider than the available horizontal space if there is a vertical scrollbar, overflowing and causing a horizontal scrollbar, something I also often see with the bizarre practice of setting the width of the body to 100vw. Now, considering the elements we normally want to be full-bleed are likely images, we can hide the problem with overflow-x: hidden on the html. But it still doesn’t feel quite right.
Maybe it’s because I’m a tech, not a designer who thinks in terms of design grids, but I prefer to keep my grids minimal and when I look at the desired result, my first thought is: that’s a single column grid with the items that are wider than the column, and everything is center-aligned.
So let’s take a look at the approach I most commonly use (or at least start from), which doesn’t involve a scary-looking grid column setup, and, for the simple base cases, doesn’t involve any containers or even any calc(), which some people find confusing.
The Base Grid
We’re starting off with a grid, of course! We set a one limited width column grid on the body and we middle align this grid horizontally within the the content-box of the body:
body {
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: min(100%, 60em);
justify-content: center
}Code language: CSS (css)By default, display: grid creates a one column grid that stretches horizontally across the entire content-box width of the element it’s set on. This makes all the children of the element getting display: grid be distributed in that one column, one on each row. The first on the first row, the second on the second row and so on.
The grid-template-columns property is used here to max out the width of this one column at 60em by setting its width to be the minimum between 100% of the content-box width and 60em. If the content-box of the element we’ve set the grid on has a width of up to 60em, then the one column of the grid stretches horizontally across the entire content-box. If the content-box of the element we’ve set the grid on has a width above 60em, then our one grid column doesn’t stretch horizontally across the entire content-box anymore, but instead stays 60em wide, the maximum width it can take. Of course, this maximum width can be any other value we want.
The justify-content property is used to align the grid horizontally within the content-box of the element it’s set on. In this case, our one grid column is center aligned.
Note that I keep talking about the content-box here. This is because, even at really narrow viewports, we normally want a bit of space in between the text edge and the lateral edge of the available area (the viewport minus any scrollbars we might have). Initially, this space is the default margin of 8px on the body, though I also often do something similar to the approach Chris wrote about recently and zero the default margin to replace it with a clamped font-relative padding. But whichever of them is used still gets subtracted from the available space (viewport width minus any vertical scrollbar we might have) to give us the content-box width of the body.
Now whatever children the body may have (headings, paragraphs, images and so on), they’re all in the limited width grid cells of our one column, something that’s highlighted by the DevTools grid overlay in the screenshot below.
Full-Bleed Elements
Let’s say we want to make an element full-bleed (edge to edge). For example, an image or an image gallery, because that’s what makes the most sense to have stretching all across the entire available page width. This means we want the full viewport width minus any scrollbars we might have.
Nowadays we can get that by making the html a container so that its descendants know its available width (not including scrollbars) as 100cqw (container query width).
html { container-type: inline-size }Code language: CSS (css)Having this, we can create our full-bleed elements:
.full-bleed-elem {
justify-self: center;
width: 100cqw
}Code language: CSS (css)Setting width: 100cqw on our full-bleed elements means they get the full available content-box width of the nearest container, which is the html in this case.
The justify-self aligns the element horizontally within its grid-area (which is limited to one grid cell in our case here). We need to set it here because the default is start, which means the left edge of the element starts from the left edge of its containing grid-area. The left edge of the containing grid-area is the same as the left edge of our one column grid here.
Just like before, we still have a single column grid, center aligned.
One thing to note here is this means we cannot have any margin, border or padding on the html element as any of these would reduce its content-box, whose size is what the container query units are based on. In practice, the margin, border, and padding on the html are all zero by default and I don’t think I’ve seen them set to anything else anywhere outside of some mind-bending CSS Battle solutions.
Another thing to note is that there may be cases where we need another container somewhere in between. In that case, we can still access the content-box width of the html as detailed in a previous article:
@property --full-w {
syntax: '<length>';
initial-value: 0px;
inherits: true;
}
html { container-type: inline-size }
body { --full-w: 100cqw }
.full-bleed-elem {
justify-self: center;
width: var(--full-w);
}Code language: CSS (css)Often times, we probably also want some padding on the full-bleed element if it is, for example, an image gallery, but not if it is a single img element.
For img elements, the actual image always occupies just the content-box. Any padding we set on it is empty space around the content-box. This is not generally desirable in our case. Unless we want to add some kind of decorations around it via the background property (by layering CSS gradients to create some kind of cool pattern, for example), we want the image to stretch all across the available viewport space after accounting for any vertical scrollbar we might have and not be left with empty space on the lateral sides.
Furthermore, if the img uses a box-sizing of content-box, that empty padding space gets added to the 100cqw width of its content-box, making the padding-box width exceed the available space and causing a horizontal scrollbar on the page.
When setting a padding on full-bleed elements, it’s probably best to exclude img elements:
.full-bleed-elem:not(img) { padding: .5em }Code language: CSS (css)Note that in this case, the full-bleed elements getting the padding need to also have box-sizing set to border-box. This is done so that the padding gets subtracted out of the set width and not added as it would happen in the default content-box case.
.full-bleed-elem:not(img) {
box-sizing: border-box;
padding: .5em
}Code language: CSS (css)You can see it in action and play with it in the following live demo:
You might be wondering… is it even necessary to set border-box since setting everything to border-box is a pretty popular reset style?
Personally, I don’t set that in resets anymore because I find that with the the new layout options we have, the number of cases where I still need to explicitly set dimensions in general and widths in particular has declined. Drastically. Most of the time, I just size columns, rows, set the flex property instead and let the grid or flex children get sized by those without explicitly setting any dimensions. And when I don’t have to set dimensions explicitly, the box-sizing becomes irrelevant and even problematic in some situations. So I just don’t bother with including box-sizing: border-box in the reset these days anymore and instead only set it in the cases where it’s needed.
Like here, for the non-img full bleed elements.
Another thing you may be wondering about… how about just setting a negative lateral margin?
We know the viewport width minus any scrollbars as 100cqw, we know the column width as 100%, so the difference between the two 100cqw - 100% is the space on the left side of the column plus the space on the right side of the column. This means half the difference .5*(100cqw - 100%), which we can also write as 50cqw - 50%, is the space on just one side. And then we put a minus in front and get our lateral margin. Like this:
.full-bleed-elem {
margin: .5rem calc(50% - 50cqw);
}Code language: CSS (css)Or, if we want to avoid overriding the vertical margin:
.full-bleed-elem {
margin-inline: calc(50% - 50cqw);
}Code language: CSS (css)This seems like a good option. It’s just one margin property instead of a justify-self and a width one. And it also avoids having to set box-sizing to border-box if we want a padding on our full-bleed element. But we should also take into account what exactly we are most likely to make full-bleed.
One case we considered here was that of full-bleed images. The thing with img elements is that, by default, they don’t size themselves to fit the grid areas containing them, they just use their own intrinsic size. For full-bleed images this means they are either going to not fill the entire available viewport space if their intrinsic width is smaller than the viewport or overflow the viewport if their intrinsic width is bigger than the available viewport space (the viewport width minus any vertical scrollbar we might have). So we need to set their width anyway.
For the other case, that of the scrolling image gallery, the negative margin can be an option.
Breakout Elements
These are wider than our main content, so they break out of our grid column, but are not full-bleed.
So we would give them a width that’s smaller than the content-box width of the html, which we know as 100cqw, but still bigger than the width of our only grid column, which we know as 100%. Assuming we want breakout elements to extend out on each side by 4em, this means:
.break-elem {
justify-self: center;
width: min(100cqw, 100% + 2*4em)
}Code language: CSS (css)Again, we might use a negative lateral margin instead. For breakout elements, which are a lot more likely to be text content elements, the negative margin approach makes more sense than for the full-bleed ones. Note that just like the width, the lateral margin also needs to be capped in case the lateral space on the sides of our column drops under 4em.
.break-elem { margin: 0 max(-4em, 50% - 50cqw) }Code language: CSS (css)Note that we use the max() because for negative values like the margin here, the smaller (minimum) one in absolute value (closer to 0) is the one that’s bigger when looking at the full axis going from minus to plus infinity.
But then again, we might want to be consistent and set full-bleed and breakout styles the same way, maybe grouping them together:
.full-bleed-elem, .break-elem {
justify-self: center;
width: min(100cqw var(--comp-w, ));
}
/* This is valid! */
.break-elem { --comp-w: , 100% + 2*4em }
:is(.full-bleed-elem, .break-elem):not(img) {
box-sizing: border-box;
padding: .5em;
}Code language: CSS (css)Some people prefer :where() instead of :is() for specificity reasons, as :where() always has 0 specificity, while :is() has the specificity of the most specific selector in its arguments. But that is precisely one of my main reasons for using :is() here.
And yes, both having an empty default for a CSS variable and its value starting with a comma is valid. Replacing --comp-w with its value gives us a width of min(100cqw) (which is the same as 100cqw) for full-bleed elements and one of min(100cqw, 100% + 2*4em) for breakout elements.
If we want to have different types of breakout elements that extend out more or less, not all exactly by the same fixed value, we make that value a custom property --dx, which we can change based on the type of breakout element:
.break-elem { --comp-w: , 100% + 2*var(--dx, 4em) }Code language: CSS (css)The --dx value could also be negative and, in this case, the element doesn’t really break out of the main column, it shrinks so it’s narrower.
.break-elem--mini { --dx: -2em }
.break-elem--maxi { --dx: 8em }
Code language: CSS (css)Full-Bleed Backgrounds for Limited Width Elements
Sometimes we may want only the background of the element to be full-bleed, but not the element content. In the simplest case, we can do with a border-image and if you want to better understand this property, check out this article by Temani Afif detailing a lot of use cases.
.full-bleed-back {
border-image: var(--img) fill 0/ / 0 50cqw;
}Code language: CSS (css)This works for mono backgrounds (like the one created for the full-bleed header and footer below with a single stop gradient), for most gradients and even for actual images in some cases.
The mono background above is created as follows (all these demos adapt to user theme preferences):
--img: conic-gradient(light-dark(#ededed, #121212) 0 0)Code language: CSS (css)This method is perfect for such mono backgrounds, but if we want gradient or image ones, there are some aspects we need to consider.
The thing about the 0 50cqw outset value is that it tells the browser to extend the area where the border-image is painted by 50cqw outwards from the padding-box boundary on the lateral sides. This means it extends outside the vewport, but since this is just the border-image, not the border reserving space, it doesn’t cause overflow/ a horizontal scrollbar, so we can keep it simple and use it like this for gradients.
That is, if we can avoid percentage position trouble. While this is not an issue in linear top to bottom gradients, if we want to use percentages in linear left to right gradients or to position radial or conic ones, we need to scale the [0%, 100%] interval to the [50% - 50cqw, 50% + 50cqw] interval along the x axis.
.linear-horizontal {
--img:
linear-gradient(
90deg,
var(--c0) calc(50% - 50cqw),
var(--c1) 50%
);
}
.radial {
--img:
radial-gradient(
15cqw at calc(50% - 25cqw) 0,
var(--c0),
var(--c1)
);
}
.conic {
--img:
conic-gradient(
at calc(50% + 15cqw),
var(--c1) 30%,
var(--c0),
var(--c1) 70%
);
}Code language: CSS (css)However, this scaling is not enough for linear gradients at an angle that’s not a multiple of 90°. And it may be overly complicated even for the types of gradients where it works well.
So another option is compute how much the border-image needs to expand laterally out of the available horizontal space 100cqw and the maximum grid column width --grid-w. This then allows us to use percentages normally inside any kind of gradient, including linear ones at an angle that’s not a multiple of 90°.
body {
--grid-w: 60em;
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: min(100%, var(--grid-w));
justify-content: center;
}
.full-bleed-back {
border-image:
var(--img) fill 0/ /
0 calc(50cqw - .5*var(--grid-w));
}Code language: CSS (css)
This has a tiny problem that other styling decisions we’re likely to take (and which we’ll discuss in a moment) prevent from happening, but, assuming we don’t make those choices, let’s take a look at it and how we can solve it.
On narrow viewports, our background isn’t full-bleed anymore, it stops a tiny distance away from the lateral sides. That tiny distance is at most the size of the lateral margin or padding on the body. As mentioned before, I prefer to zero the default margin and use a font-size-relative padding, but in a lot of cases, it doesn’t make any difference whatsoever.
This happens when the maximum grid column width --grid-w doesn’t fit anymore in the available viewport space (not including the scrollbar) minus the lateral spacing on the sides of our one column grid (set as a margin or padding).
The solution is to use a max() instead of the calc() to ensure that the border-image expands laterally at the very least as much as that lateral spacing --grid-s.
body {
--grid-w: 60em;
--grid-s: .5em;
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: min(100%, var(--grid-w));
justify-content: center;
padding: 0 var(--grid-s);
}
.full-bleed-back {
border-image:
var(--img) fill 0/ /
0 max(var(--grid-s), 50cqw - .5*var(--grid-w));
}Code language: CSS (css)For actual images however, we have an even bigger problem: border-image doesn’t offer the cover option we have for backgrounds or images and we don’t really have a reliable way of getting around this. One of the repeat options might work for us in some scenarios, but I find that’s rarely the case for the results I want in such situations.
You can see the problem in this demo when resizing the viewport — for an element whose height is unknown as it depends on its content, the border-image option (the second one) means that if we want to avoid the image getting distorted, then its size needs to be intrinsic size. Always. It never scales, which means it repeats for large viewports and its sides get clipped off for small viewports.
So if we want more control over an image background or multiple background layers, it’s probably better to use an absolutely positioned pseudo-element. This also avoids the earlier problem of the full-bleed background not going all the way to the edges without taking into account the lateral spacing on the grid container (in this case, the body).
.full-bleed-back-xtra {
position: relative;
z-index: 1
}
.full-bleed-back-xtra::before {
position: absolute;
inset: 0 calc(50% - 50cqw);
z-index: -1;
content: ''
}Code language: CSS (css)The inset makes our pseudo to stretch across the entire padding-box of its parent vertically and outside of it (minus sign) by half the available viewport space (viewport width minus any scrollbars) minus half the pseudo parent’s width.
The negative z-index on the pseudo ensures it’s behind the element’s text content. The positive z-index on the element itself ensures the pseudo doesn’t end up behind the grid container’s background too.
The pseudo background can now be a cover image:
background: var(--img-pos, var(--img) 50%)/ coverCode language: CSS (css)I’m taking this approach here to allow easily overriding the background-position together with each image if necessary. In such a case, we set --img-pos:
--img-pos: url(my-back-img.jpg) 35% 65%Code language: CSP (csp)Otherwise, we only set --img and the default of 50% gets used:
--img-pos: url(my-back-img.jpg)Code language: CSS (css)In the particular case of our demos so far, which use a light or dark theme to respect user preferences, we’ve also set a light-dark() value for the background-color, as well as an overlay blend mode to either brighten or darken our full-bleed background depending on the theme. This ensures the header text remains readable in both scenarios.
We can also have multiple layers of gradients, maybe even blended, maybe even with a filter making them grainy (something that would help with the visible banding noticed in the border-image method examples) or creating a halftone pattern.
Combining options
We can of course also have a breakout element with a full-bleed background – in this case, we give it both classes, break-elem and full-bleed-back.
Our recipe page header for example, probably looks better as a breakout element in addition to having a full-bleed background.
If the breakout elements in general have a border or their own specific background, we should ensure these don’t apply if they also have full-bleed backgrounds:
.break-elem:not([class*='full-bleed-back']) {
border: solid 1px;
background: var(--break-back)
}Code language: CSS (css)Or we can opt to separate these visual prettifying styles from the layout ones. For example, in the Halloween example demos, I’ve opted to set the border and background styles via a separate class .box:
.box {
border: solid 1px var(--c);
background: lch(from var(--c) l c h/ .15)
}Code language: CSS (css)And then set --c (as well as the warning icon in front) via a .box--warn class.
Another thing to note here is that when having a full-bleed background for a breakout element and we use the border-image tactic, we don’t have to adapt our formula to take into account the lateral spacing, as that’s set as a padding on the breakout element and not on its grid parent.
The most important of these techniques can also be seen in the meta demo below, which has the relevant CSS in style elements that got display: block.
Nesting
We may also have a figure whose img is full-bleed, while the figcaption uses the normal column width (or maybe it’s a breakout element).
<figure>
<img src='full-bleed-img.jpg' alt='image description' class='full-bleed-elem'>
<figcaption>image caption</figcaption>
</figure>Code language: HTML, XML (xml)Not much extra code is required here.
The simple modern solution is to make the img a block element so that the justify-self property set via the .full-bleed-elem middle aligns it even if it’s not a grid or flex item.
img.full-bleed-elem { display: block }Code language: CSS (css)However, support for justify-self applying to block elements as per the current spec is still limited to only Chromium browsers at the moment. And while the Firefox bug seems to have had some activity lately, the Safari one looks like it’s dormant.
So the easy cross-browser way to get around that without any further computations is to make the figure a grid too in this case.
figure:has(.full-bleed-elem, .break-elem) {
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: 100%;
width: 100%;
}Code language: CSS (css)
Floating Problems
This is a problem that got mentioned for the three column grid technique and I really didn’t understand it at first.
I started playing with CSS to change the look of a blog and for some reason, maybe because that was what the first example I saw looked like, I got into the habit of putting any floated thumbnail and the text next to it into a wrapper. And it never occurred to me that the wrapper wasn’t necessary until I started writing this article and looked into it.
Mostly because… I almost never need to float things. I did it for those blog post thumbnails fifteen years ago, for shape-outside demos, for drop caps, but that was about it. As far as layouts go, I just used position: absolute for years before going straight to flex and grid.
This was why I didn’t understand this problem at first. I thought that if you want to float something, you have to put it in a wrapper anyway. And at the end of the day, this is the easiest solution: put the entire content of our one column in a wrapper. In which case, until justify-self applying on block elements works cross-browser, we need to replace that declaration on full-bleed and breakout elements with our old friend margin-left:
margin-left: calc(50% -50cqw)Code language: CSS (css)This allows us to have floated elements inside the wrapper.
Final Thoughts: Do we even really need grid?
At this point, getting to this floats solution begs the question: do we even really need grid?
It depends.
We could just set lateral padding or margin on the body instead.
I’d normally prefer padding in this case, as padding doesn’t restrict the background and sometimes we want some full viewport backdrop effects involving both the body and the html background.
Other times, we may want a background just for the limited width of the content in the middle, in which case margin on the body makes more sense.
If we want to be ready for both situations, then we’re better off with not setting any margin or padding on the body and just wrapping all content in a limited width, middle aligned (good old max-width plus auto margins) main that also gets a background.
At the same time, my uses cases for something like this have never involved using floats and have benefitted from other grid features like gaps, which make handling spacing easier than via margins or paddings.
So at the end of the day, the best solution is going to depend on the context.
