Dividers

A Divider is a visible horizontal line that separates content areas.

Similar to Spacers, Dividers provide consistent vertical spacing while also offering visual separation of your content.

Div

The simplest, most reliable way to create a visual, horizontal divider line in HTML emails is to use a <div> element:

src/templates/example.html
<div class="h-px leading-px bg-slate-300" role="separator">&zwj;</div>

The separator role indicates that this is a divider that separates and distinguishes sections of content.

You may adjust the top and bottom spacing around the divider with margin utilities:

src/templates/example.html
<div class="h-px leading-px bg-slate-300 my-8" role="separator">&zwj;</div>

Semantic

To create a semantic Divider, we can use a regular <hr> element:

src/templates/example.html
<hr class="border-0 bg-slate-500 text-gray-500 h-px">

How it works

  1. We first reset the border-width, so we can apply our own colors
  2. We use a combination of background-color and color - the latter is for Outlook (Windows)
  3. Removing the border means the element now has no height, so we use h-px to set it to 1px

The <hr> Divider is based on Mark Robbins' excellent work, available at goodemailcode.com.

Customization

You can customize the divider and give it a custom width or height, change its color, the top/bottom space around it, and even its alignment.

Width

An <hr> goes full width by default, but we can set a custom width.

While we're at it, let's also use max-w-full, to make it responsive.

src/templates/example.html
<hr class="border-0 bg-slate-500 text-slate-500 h-px w-[400px] max-w-full">

Need a custom width for mobile devices? Use the sm breakpoint:

src/templates/example.html
<hr class="border-0 bg-slate-500 text-slate-500 h-px sm:w-16 max-w-full">

Margin

You may customize top and bottom spacing with CSS margins.

For example, let's add 32px to the top and bottom:

src/templates/example.html
<hr class="border-0 bg-slate-500 text-slate-500 h-px my-8">

Need uneven spacing?

src/templates/example.html
<hr class="border-0 bg-slate-500 text-slate-500 h-px mt-4 mb-8">

Alignment

You can use the align attribute to align a Divider.

src/templates/example.html
<hr align="right" class="border-0 bg-slate-500 text-slate-500 h-px mt-4 mb-8">

By default, it will be centered.

Vertical

For a vertical Divider, simply use a narrow width and a bigger height:

src/templates/example.html
<hr class="border-0 bg-slate-500 text-slate-500 w-px h-16 m-0">

Outlook note

The <hr> divider is harder to control in Outlook on Windows - it usually renders wider than intended and you can't use left/right CSS margins.

A proposed solution, as seen in Mark's example, is to wrap it in a <div> and add margins to that instead:

src/templates/example.html
<div class="mx-6">
<hr class="border-0 bg-slate-500 text-gray-500 h-px">
</div>

In our tests, the semantic <hr> divider has been hard to control in Outlook on Windows, so we recommend using the Div or Table Divider.

The Maizzle Starter includes a Divider component that uses the <div> technique.

Table divider

The spacing above and below the Table Divider line is defined through the vertical padding of the inner <td> element, with Tailwind CSS utilities:

src/templates/example.html
<table class="w-full" role="separator">
<tr>
<td class="py-6">
<div class="bg-slate-300 h-px leading-px">&zwj;</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

How it works:

  • py-6 adds 24px top and bottom padding
  • the <div> is the horizontal line: we set its height and line-height to 1px, and give it a background color
  • we use a &zwj; to add something inside the <div>, so it can take up height

Feel free to use &nbsp; instead of &zwj; - both work just fine 👌

Outlook note

The <div> element where we use leading-px needs some extra attention for Outlook. Otherwise, it will render thicker than intended.

To make Outlook respect the line height you set on elements, you may use the mso-line-height-rule-exactly class that is available from the tailwindcss-mso plugin (included in the Starter).

src/templates/example.html
<table class="w-full" role="separator">
<tr>
<td class="py-6">
<div class="bg-slate-300 h-px leading-px mso-line-height-rule-exactly">&zwj;</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
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