Border Spacing

​Basic usage

​Setting the border spacing

Use the border-spacing-*, border-spacing-x-*, and border-spacing-y-* utilities to control the space between the borders of table cells with separate borders.

<table class="border-separate border-spacing-2 border border-slate-400 ...">
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th class="border border-slate-300 ...">State</th>
      <th class="border border-slate-300 ...">City</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td class="border border-slate-300 ...">Indiana</td>
      <td class="border border-slate-300 ...">Indianapolis</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td class="border border-slate-300 ...">Ohio</td>
      <td class="border border-slate-300 ...">Columbus</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td class="border border-slate-300 ...">Michigan</td>
      <td class="border border-slate-300 ...">Detroit</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table><table class="border-separate border-spacing-2 border border-slate-500 ...">
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th class="border border-slate-600 ...">State</th>
      <th class="border border-slate-600 ...">City</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td class="border border-slate-700 ...">Indiana</td>
      <td class="border border-slate-700 ...">Indianapolis</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td class="border border-slate-700 ...">Ohio</td>
      <td class="border border-slate-700 ...">Columbus</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td class="border border-slate-700 ...">Michigan</td>
      <td class="border border-slate-700 ...">Detroit</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

​Applying conditionally

​Hover, focus, and other states

Tailwind lets you conditionally apply utility classes in different states using variant modifiers. For example, use hover:border-spacing-2 to only apply the border-spacing-2 utility on hover.

<table class="hover:border-spacing-2">
  <!-- ... -->
</table>

For a complete list of all available state modifiers, check out the Hover, Focus, & Other States documentation.

​Breakpoints and media queries

You can also use variant modifiers to target media queries like responsive breakpoints, dark mode, prefers-reduced-motion, and more. For example, use md:border-spacing-4 to apply the border-spacing-4 utility at only medium screen sizes and above.

<table class="md:border-spacing-4">
  <!-- ... -->
</table>

To learn more, check out the documentation on Responsive Design, Dark Mode and other media query modifiers.

​Using custom values

​Customizing your theme

By default, Tailwind’s border spacing utilities use the default spacing scale. You can customize your spacing scale by editing theme.spacing or theme.extend.spacing in your tailwind.config.js file.

module.exports = {
  theme: {
    extend: {
      spacing: {
        '13': '3.25rem',
      }
    }
  }
}

Alternatively, you can customize just the border spacing scale by editing theme.borderSpacing or theme.extend.borderSpacing in your tailwind.config.js file.

module.exports = {
  theme: {
    extend: {
      borderSpacing: {
        '13': '3.25rem',
      },
    }
  }
}

Learn more about customizing the default theme in the theme customization documentation.

​Arbitrary values

If you need to use a one-off border-spacing value that doesn’t make sense to include in your theme, use square brackets to generate a property on the fly using any arbitrary value.

<div class="border-spacing-[7px]">
  <!-- ... -->
</div>

Learn more about arbitrary value support in the arbitrary values documentation.