Column layouts - CSS | MDN

HTML: Markup language
CSS: Styling language
JavaScript: Scripting language
Web APIs: Programming interfaces
Learn web development
Get to know MDN better
You will often need to create a layout which has a number of columns, and CSS provides several ways to do this. Whether you use Multi-column, Flexbox, or Grid layout will depend on what you are trying to achieve, and in this recipe we explore these options.
There are a number of design patterns you might want to achieve with your columns:
You need to choose different layout methods in order to achieve your requirements.
If you create columns using multi-column layout your text will remain as a continuous stream filling each column in turn. The columns must all be the same size, and you are unable to target an individual column or the content of an individual column.
You can control the gaps between columns with the column-gap or gap properties, and add a rule between columns using column-rule.
Click "Play" in the code blocks below to edit the example in the MDN Playground:
In this example, we used the column-width property to set a minimum width that the columns need to be before the browser adds an additional column. The columns shorthand property can be used to set the column-width and column-count properties, either of which can define the maximum number of columns allowed.
Flexbox can be used to break content into columns by setting display: flex; to make a parent element a flex-container. Just adding this one property turns all the children (child elements, pseudo-elements, and text nodes) into flex items along a single line. Setting the same flex shorthand property with a single numeric value distributes all the available space equally, generally making all the flex items the same size as long as none have non-wrapping content forcing the item to be larger.
Margins or the gap property can be used to create gaps between items, but there is currently no CSS property that adds rules between flex items.
To create a layout with flex items that wrap onto new rows, set the flex-wrap property on the container to wrap. Note that each flex line distributes space for that line only. Items in one line will not necessarily line up with items on other lines, as you'll see in the example below. This is why flexbox is described as one-dimensional. It is designed for controlling layout as a row or a column, but not both at the same time.
If you want a two-dimensional grid where items line up in rows and columns, then you should choose CSS grid layout. Similar to how flexbox works on the direct children of the flex container, grid layout works on the direct children of the grid container. Just set display: grid; on the container. Properties set on this container — like grid-template-columns and grid-template-rows — define how the items are distributed along rows and columns.
Click "Play" in the code blocks below to edit the example in the MDN Playground:
This page was last modified on Nov 7, 2025 by MDN contributors.
Your blueprint for a better internet.
Portions of this content are ©1998–2026 by individual mozilla.org contributors. Content available under a Creative Commons license.