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M
Glossary Term

Masonry Layout.

Learn what Masonry Layout means in modern web design.

Part of speechnoun

A grid layout where items pack tightly into available space without uniform row heights — like bricks of varying sizes filling a wall.

Masonry layouts arrange items vertically in columns, with each new item placed in the column that currently has the shortest stack. The result is dense, asymmetric packing with no horizontal alignment between rows. Pinterest popularized the pattern in 2010; CSS's emerging masonry layout module (Chrome 2025) brought native support.

Where It Shines

Masonry is ideal for image galleries with varying aspect ratios, blog index pages with mixed card heights, and any content where natural variability is more interesting than uniform rectangles. It maximizes information density per scroll without forcing crops.

Implementation Notes

Before native CSS masonry, the pattern required JavaScript libraries (Masonry.js, Isotope) that caused layout shift and hurt Core Web Vitals. Modern implementations using CSS grid-template-rows: masonry are render-stable and dramatically faster.

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