Are 0.4in margins acceptable?

They usually print, but they leave no error margin and look tight. Treat 0.5in as the floor.

Should margins be equal on all sides?

Left and right must match. Top and bottom can be slightly smaller without looking wrong, which is a cheap way to gain a line or two.

Resume Margins, Spacing and White Space

Last updated 2026-08-04

Margins are the first thing people shrink when a resume spills onto a second page, and past a certain point it stops working — the document reads as cramped, and the extra content nobody wanted to cut still is not read.

A parser reads left to right, top to bottom. Two columns interleave into nonsense; one column survives intact.

The safe ranges

Margins: 0.5in to 1in (36pt to 72pt). Below 0.5in risks clipping on some office printers and pushes text toward the page edge, where a few parsers pay less attention.
Line height: 1.15 to 1.4 times the font size.
Space between sections: roughly 1.5 lines. Enough that the eye registers a boundary without wasting a whole line.
Space between roles within a section: about half a line.

Buy space in this order

When you need to reclaim a few lines, exhaust these before cutting content:

Reduce margins from 1in to 0.6in — this alone often reclaims 6 to 8 lines.
Reduce line height from 1.4 to 1.2.
Reduce body font from 11.5pt to 10.5pt.
Put your contact details on one line rather than stacked.
Only then start cutting content.

White space is not wasted space

A resume with no breathing room is read less carefully, because there is nowhere for the eye to rest and no visual hierarchy telling it where to go. A slightly shorter document with clear spacing consistently outperforms a dense one that technically fits more in.

Frequently asked questions

Are 0.4in margins acceptable?: They usually print, but they leave no error margin and look tight. Treat 0.5in as the floor.
Should margins be equal on all sides?: Left and right must match. Top and bottom can be slightly smaller without looking wrong, which is a cheap way to gain a line or two.

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