With eight layouts to pick from, the right choice comes down to your content and how you want people to move through it. This guide walks through that decision, from uniform product grids to mixed-orientation photo sets, so you can land on the layout that fits rather than trying each one in turn.
Location Gallery Settings → Layout → Layout Type
Start from your content #
Three questions about your images usually point straight to the right layout.
The first is whether your images share a shape. A set shot to the same proportions — product photos, headshots, screenshots — looks clean in a Grid, where every item shares one shape. A set of mixed orientations, where portraits sit beside landscapes, is better served by Masonry or Justified, which keep each image at its natural proportions instead of cropping to fit.
The second is how many images there are. A handful suits a single showcase or a strip; a large archive suits Justified or Masonry, which are built to arrange many varied images tidily.
The third is how you want people to move through them. A wall to scan suits a Grid or Masonry; a sequence to step through one at a time suits the Slider or Image Viewer; a single lead image suits Single Item or Featured Item.
Matching content to a layout #
- Uniform images, a tidy wall — Grid. Every item the same shape, in even rows and columns.
- Mixed orientations, no cropping, staggered look — Masonry. Columns of varied heights, Pinterest-style.
- Mixed orientations, flush even rows — Justified. Rows filled edge to edge at a target height.
- One showcase image — Single Item. A single hero, fixed with manual sort or rotating with random sort.
- A sequence in a compact space — Slider. A swipe-able strip with arrows, bullets, autoplay, and an optional thumbnail rail.
- Focused, one-at-a-time viewing — Image Viewer. A distraction-free stage with a quiet control bar.
- A hero image plus a supporting set — Featured Item. One large image beside a compact grid, with a button to open the whole set.
- A personal, casual feel — Instant Photos. Tilted, white-framed prints, like snapshots on a table.
By who you are #
Different kinds of work tend toward different layouts.
A photographer with mixed-orientation shoots usually wants Masonry or Justified, which keep every frame at its true proportions, and may use Single Item with random sort for a rotating hero on a homepage. An online shop tends toward the Grid for uniform product walls and the Slider for hero rows and featured strips. A real-estate agent suits Featured Item, where a main shot leads and a grid of rooms supports it, with the full set a click away. A hobbyist or creator showing personal work often enjoys Instant Photos for its relaxed, scrapbook character.
These are starting points, not rules. The layout is easy to change, so it is worth previewing a couple against your own images.
Performance and mobile #
Some layouts arrange themselves entirely in the browser as the page sizes up, which lets them fit any screen but means a little work happens after the page loads. Masonry, Justified, the Slider, and the Image Viewer all work this way. The Grid, Single Item, Featured Item, and Instant Photos arrange with less in-browser work. In practice all eight perform well, but for the very largest galleries the difference is worth keeping in mind.
On phones, column count is the main lever. The Grid, Masonry, and Instant Photos layouts let you set fewer columns on mobile so images stay large enough to see, and the Slider drops to one item per view by default. Check any Gallery on a phone-sized preview before publishing, since a layout that looks right on a wide screen can feel cramped on a narrow one.
Tips and recommendations #
You do not have to get this right the first time. The layout can be changed whenever you like, and each one keeps its own settings, so you can try Masonry, switch to Justified, and go back without losing your setup.
When you are unsure, start with the Grid. It handles every content type and Gallery size, and gives you a clean baseline to judge whether a more specialised layout would suit your images better. From there, the question is usually simple: do the images want to keep their own shape, and do people want to scan them or step through them? The answers point to the layout.
For the full list of layouts and the settings they share, see the companion overview on choosing a layout.
