Full Width or Contained, Your Choice
Every design now offers three content widths: full, which uses the whole window, contained, which is the traditional centered column, and narrow, which is tighter still.
Why this is not cosmetic
Line length determines whether text gets read. Somewhere around 60 to 75 characters per line is comfortable. Much beyond that and the eye loses its place returning to the start of the next line, and people stop reading without knowing why.
On a modern wide monitor a full-width layout can put 160 characters on a line. That is roughly twice what is readable, and it is why a bio that seemed fine when you wrote it feels exhausting on somebody else's screen.
Which to pick
Full for photographs and video. A gallery or a reel benefits from the space and neither has a line length problem.
Contained for almost everything else. It is the default for a reason.
Narrow for text-heavy sites. If your site is mostly writing, this reads better than either alternative.
Several designs let you set it per section, which is the ideal arrangement: full for the reel at the top, contained below it.
The most common mistake
Choosing full width because it looks impressive on the monitor you are building it on. Your monitor is not representative. Most of your visitors are on phones, where all three settings look nearly identical, and the ones on desktops are on screens of every conceivable size.
If in doubt, contained. It fails gracefully on everything.
What does not change
Mobile. Below a certain width the setting has no effect, because there is only one sensible layout on a phone and the design already uses it. This is covered in mobile optimization.
Related
Width interacts with type, so if you change one, look at the other. See font choices. The other settings in the same panel are color, texture and grayscale.
Older reading: making an intuitive actor website.
Create a free actor website and read your own bio at each width.
