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Layout

Options for structuring your pages with Bootstrap, including global styles, required scaffolding, grid system, and more.

Overview

Bootstrap includes several components and options for laying out your project, including wrapping containers, a powerful grid system, a flexible media object, and responsive utility classes.

Containers

Containers are the most basic layout element in Bootstrap and are required when using our grid system. Choose from a responsive, fixed-width container (meaning its max-width changes at each breakpoint) or fluid-width (meaning it’s 100% wide all the time).

While containers can be nested, most layouts do not require a nested container.

<div class="container">
  <!-- Content here -->
</div>

Use .container-fluid for a full width container, spanning the entire width of the viewport.

<div class="container-fluid">
  ...
</div>

Responsive breakpoints

Since Bootstrap is developed to be mobile first, we use a handful of media queries to create sensible breakpoints for our layouts and interfaces. These breakpoints are mostly based on minimum viewport widths and allow us to scale up elements as the viewport changes.

Bootstrap primarily uses the following media query ranges—or breakpoints—in our source Sass files for our layout, grid system, and components.

// Extra small devices (portrait phones, less than 544px)
// No media query since this is the default in Bootstrap

// Small devices (landscape phones, 544px and up)
@media (min-width: 544px) { ... }

// Medium devices (tablets, 768px and up)
@media (min-width: 768px) { ... }

// Large devices (desktops, 992px and up)
@media (min-width: 992px) { ... }

// Extra large devices (large desktops, 1200px and up)
@media (min-width: 1200px) { ... }

Since we write our source CSS in Sass, all our media queries are available via Sass mixins:

@include media-breakpoint-up(xs) { ... }
@include media-breakpoint-up(sm) { ... }
@include media-breakpoint-up(md) { ... }
@include media-breakpoint-up(lg) { ... }
@include media-breakpoint-up(xl) { ... }

// Example usage:
@include media-breakpoint-up(sm) {
  .some-class {
    display: block;
  }
}

We occasionally use media queries that go in the other direction (the given screen size or smaller):

// Extra small devices (portrait phones, less than 544px)
@media (max-width: 543px) { ... }

// Small devices (landscape phones, less than 768px)
@media (max-width: 767px) { ... }

// Medium devices (tablets, less than 992px)
@media (max-width: 991px) { ... }

// Large devices (desktops, less than 1200px)
@media (max-width: 1199px) { ... }

// Extra large devices (large desktops)
// No media query since the extra-large breakpoint has no upper bound on its width

Once again, these media queries are also available via Sass mixins:

@include media-breakpoint-down(xs) { ... }
@include media-breakpoint-down(sm) { ... }
@include media-breakpoint-down(md) { ... }
@include media-breakpoint-down(lg) { ... }