Grid
The Material Design responsive layout grid adapts to screen size and orientation, ensuring consistency across layouts.
The grid creates visual consistency between layouts while allowing flexibility across a wide variety of designs. Material Design's responsive UI is based on a 12-column grid layout.
How it works
The grid system is implemented with the Grid component:
- It uses CSS's Flexible Box module for high flexibility.
- There are two types of layout: containers and items.
- Item widths are set in percentages, so they're always fluid and sized relative to their parent element.
- Items have padding to create the spacing between individual items.
- There are five grid breakpoints: xs, sm, md, lg, and xl.
- Integer values can be given to each breakpoint, indicating how many of the 12 available columns are occupied by the component when the viewport width satisfies the breakpoint constraints.
If you are new to or unfamiliar with flexbox, we encourage you to read this CSS-Tricks flexbox guide.
Fluid grids
Fluid grids use columns that scale and resize content. A fluid grid's layout can use breakpoints to determine if the layout needs to change dramatically.
Basic grid
Column widths are integer values between 1 and 12; they apply at any breakpoint and indicate how many columns are occupied by the component.
A value passed to any given breakpoint also applies to all wider breakpoints (if they have no values explicitly defined).
For example, xs={12} sizes a component to occupy the full width of its parent container, regardless of the viewport size.
Grid with multiple breakpoints
Components may have multiple widths defined, causing the layout to change at the defined breakpoint. Width values given to larger breakpoints override those given to smaller breakpoints.
For example, xs={12} sm={6} sizes a component to occupy half of the viewport width (6 columns) when viewport width is 600 or more pixels. For smaller viewports, the component fills all 12 available columns.
Spacing
To control space between children, use the spacing prop.
The spacing value can be any positive number, including decimals and any string.
The prop is converted into a CSS property using the theme.spacing() helper.
<Grid container spacing={2}>Row & column spacing
The rowSpacing and columnSpacing props allow for specifying the row and column gaps independently.
It's similar to the row-gap and column-gap properties of CSS Grid.
Responsive values
You can switch the props' value based on the active breakpoint. For instance, we can implement the "recommended" responsive layout grid of Material Design.
Responsive values is supported by:
columnscolumnSpacingdirectionrowSpacingspacing- all the other props of the system
Interactive
Below is an interactive demo that lets you explore the visual results of the different settings:
<Grid
container
direction="row"
justifyContent="center"
alignItems="center"
>Auto-layout
The Auto-layout makes the items equitably share the available space. That also means you can set the width of one item and the others will automatically resize around it.
Variable width content
Set one of the size breakpoint props to "auto" instead of true / a number to size
a column based on the natural width of its content.
Complex Grid
The following demo doesn't follow the Material Design guidelines, but illustrates how the grid can be used to build complex layouts.
Full resolution 1920x1080 • JPEG
ID: 1030114
Remove
Nested Grid
The container and item props are two independent booleans; they can be combined to allow a Grid component to be both a flex container and child.
⚠️ Defining an explicit width to a Grid element that is flex container, flex item, and has spacing at the same time leads to unexpected behavior, avoid doing it:
<Grid spacing={1} container item xs={12}>
If you need to do such, remove one of the props.
Columns
You can change the default number of columns (12) with the columns prop.
Limitations
Negative margin
The spacing between items is implemented with a negative margin. This might lead to unexpected behaviors. For instance, to apply a background color, you need to apply display: flex; to the parent.
white-space: nowrap
The initial setting on flex items is min-width: auto.
This causes a positioning conflict when children use white-space: nowrap;.
You can reproduce the issue with:
<Grid item xs>
<Typography noWrap>
In order for the item to stay within the container you need to set min-width: 0.
In practice, you can set the zeroMinWidth prop:
<Grid item xs zeroMinWidth>
<Typography noWrap>
Truncation should be conditionally applicable on this long line of text as this is a much longer line than what the container can support.
Truncation should be conditionally applicable on this long line of text as this is a much longer line than what the container can support.
Truncation should be conditionally applicable on this long line of text as this is a much longer line than what the container can support.
direction: column | column-reverse
The xs, sm, md, lg, and xl props are not supported within direction="column" and direction="column-reverse" containers.
They define the number of grids the component will use for a given breakpoint. They are intended to control width using flex-basis in row containers but they will impact height in column containers.
If used, these props may have undesirable effects on the height of the Grid item elements.
CSS Grid Layout
The Grid component is using CSS flexbox internally.
But as seen below, you can easily use the system and CSS Grid to layout your pages.
System props
As a CSS utility component, the Grid supports all system properties. You can use them as props directly on the component.
For instance, a padding:
<Grid item p={2}>