What are the dimensions of a website?
A fellow graphic designer recently asked for some advice. They wanted to know what width to design a website to then be handed to the developer to build from.
I replied with the simple answer that it’s a popularity contest, based on some technical information. So here goes my answer.
Essentially there are two types of websites — fixed width and stretched/full width (the later is often confused with responsive websites). Responsive essentially refers to the change of appearance of a website as it appears to respond differently depending on the device used.
Fixed width websites are just that — the developer has set default values for the width in pixels based on the visual. GOV.UK for instance uses a fixed width of 960 pixels for the main content.
Stretched or full width are sites that fill the browser width regardless of how you adjust your window, hence why sometimes people use the term responsive. You are simply seeing the responsive effect live as you change the browser window shape.
So based on these types what are the dimensions of a website?
There are millions of websites and there are hundreds of devices, screens and platforms. So ultimately its about which sizes are most popular.
To demonstrate this popularity using data from two million websites collect by StatCounter gives us the following winners.
| Screen width (Pixels) |
Maximum screen height (Pixels) |
Desktop market share. Dec 2018 to Dec 2019 (Percentage) |
| 1366 | 768 |
24.19 |
| 1920 |
1080 |
19.89 |
| 1440 |
900 |
6.83 |
| 1536 |
864 |
6.09 |
| 1600 |
900 |
4.86 |
| 1280 |
800 |
3.66 |
| 1280 |
720 |
3.59 |
| 1280 |
1024 |
3.41 |
| 1024 |
768 |
3.34 |
| 1680 |
1050 |
2.53 |
| 360 |
640 |
2.05 |
| 2560 |
1440 |
1.9 |
| 1360 |
768 |
1.6 |
| 1920 |
1200 |
1.15 |
| 800 |
600 |
0.67 |
| 360 |
720 |
0.52 |
| 2048 |
1152 |
0.43 |
| 360 |
780 |
0.43 |
| 320 |
570 |
0.4 |
| 1093 |
615 |
0.35 |
| Other | Other |
12.11 |