Foundation

Spacing units

Spacing units are based on multiples of 8 to maintain a consistent rhythm when applied to margins, padding, and other dimensions.

Why multiples of 8?

The number 8 is easily broken down into smaller measurements before it approaches sub-pixel units. Additionally, many popular screen sizes are also divisible by 8.

Read more about the 8-point grid

Spacing tokens

The VA follows the USWDS spacing unit tokens and then adds additional semantic tokens.

Primitive

Token	Value	Example
`vads-spacing-0`	0
`vads-spacing-0p5`	4px
`vads-spacing-0p25`	2px
`vads-spacing-1`	8px
`vads-spacing-1p5`	12px
`vads-spacing-1px`	1px
`vads-spacing-2`	16px
`vads-spacing-2p5`	20px
`vads-spacing-3`	24px
`vads-spacing-4`	32px
`vads-spacing-5`	40px
`vads-spacing-6`	48px
`vads-spacing-7`	56px
`vads-spacing-8`	64px
`vads-spacing-9`	72px
`vads-spacing-10`	80px
`vads-spacing-15`	120px

Semantic

Token	Value
`vads-forms-spacing-vertical-stack-default`	vads-spacing-vertical-stack-l
`vads-spacing-inset-l`	vads-spacing-4
`vads-spacing-inset-m`	vads-spacing-3
`vads-spacing-inset-s`	vads-spacing-2
`vads-spacing-vertical-stack-default`	vads-spacing-vertical-stack-s
`vads-spacing-vertical-stack-l`	vads-spacing-4
`vads-spacing-vertical-stack-m`	vads-spacing-3
`vads-spacing-vertical-stack-s`	vads-spacing-2

Using the spacing units

In order to keep spacing consistent throughout VA.gov, it is recommended you favor using the units functions instead of hard coding pixels (or relative units) for margins and padding.

In order to access the spacing tokens in your project, you will need to import the base files into your project. Here is how this site is doing that.

There are two ways of using the spacing tokens in your code.

Output CSS as REM units

.foo {
  margin: units(5);
  padding: units(2.5);  
}

will compile to:

.foo {
  margin: 4rem;
  padding: 2rem;
}

Output CSS as PX units

.foo {
  margin: units-px(5);
  padding: units-px(2.5);  
}

will compile to:

.foo {
  margin: 40px;
  padding: 20px;
}