All principles
What we do with it
- 01
A border or a background color is the quickest way to say these belong together.
- 02
Cards work because each card is its own region.
- 03
Use it sparingly. Boxes inside boxes inside boxes stop meaning anything.
Examples
Getting it wrong, getting it right.
Don't
A pricing table where every feature row runs the full width with no column boxes. People can't tell which plan a checkmark belongs to.
Do
Each plan sits in its own panel. The features inside it belong to it, and nobody has to trace a row across the page.
The evidence
What the research says.
Evidence: Holds up
Stephen Palmer showed in 1992 that a shared boundary groups things strongly, strongly enough to override closeness: two dots far apart inside one box read as a pair before two close dots in separate boxes.
Sources
- Palmer, S. E. (1992). Common region: A new principle of perceptual grouping. Cognitive Psychology, 24(3).
- Wagemans, J., Elder, J. H., Kubovy, M., Palmer, S. E., Peterson, M. A., Singh, M., & von der Heydt, R. (2012). A century of Gestalt psychology in visual perception: I. Perceptual grouping and figure-ground organization. Psychological Bulletin, 138(6).
Last reviewed November 7, 2026. How we keep this current