Creating a Masonry Gallery Layout in WordPress (No JavaScript Required!)
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For years, web developers have wrestled with masonry-style layouts—those beautiful, Pinterest-like grids where elements of varying heights flow naturally into place.
Historically, achieving this effect required JavaScript libraries like Masonry.js, Isotope, or manually calculating heights with flexbox or grid hacks. But what if I told you there’s a super simple way to create a masonry gallery using just CSS? Yep, no JavaScript needed! (But hopefully you know a little about Advanced Custom Fields 🤪)
The Struggle: Masonry Layouts in the Past
Masonry-style layouts have always been tricky to achieve natively with CSS. The biggest hurdle? CSS Grid and Flexbox, while incredibly powerful, don’t support an automatic “packing” behavior that stacks items of different heights efficiently. To get around this, we’ve relied on JavaScript solutions like:
- Masonry.js – One of the most popular solutions, but it requires extra scripting and can be heavy on performance.
- Isotope.js – Great for filtering and sorting, but still requires JavaScript and can be overkill for simple layouts.
- Flexbox/Grid hacks – These involve complicated calculations and are not always responsive-friendly.
Thankfully, CSS is finally catching up, and there’s a simpler way to achieve a masonry layout using just CSS columns.
The Future: display: masonry;
(Not Quite Ready Yet)
There’s an upcoming CSS feature called display: masonry;
, which will bring true native support for masonry layouts. However, as of now (early 2025), browser support is still lacking, with no full implementation in major browsers. Until that changes, we need a workaround.
The Easy Solution: CSS Columns
The columns
property in CSS allows us to create a true masonry-style effect without any JavaScript. It works by breaking content into columns and letting the browser automatically flow elements into them. This approach is lightweight, responsive, and works in all modern browsers.
How to Implement a Masonry Gallery with CSS Columns
Here’s the core CSS you’ll need:
.masonry-gallery {
column-count: 3; /* Adjust based on your design */
column-gap: 1rem; /* Space between columns */
column-width: 300px; /* Adjust based on your design */
}
.masonry-gallery__image {
break-inside: avoid; /* Prevents images from breaking across columns */
margin-bottom: 1rem; /* Space between items */
}
Implementing in WordPress
If you’re using Gutenberg or the WordPress Block Editor, you can add this manually or through a custom block. If you’re coding a theme, here’s a step-by-step guide to integrating a masonry-style gallery in your theme.
1. Add the HTML in a Custom Block or Template
<ul class="masonry-gallery">
<?php
$images = get_field('gallery'); // Example using Advanced Custom Fields
if( $images ):
foreach( $images as $image ): ?>
<li class="masonry-gallery__image">
<img src="<?php echo esc_url($image['url']); ?>" alt="<?php echo esc_attr($image['alt']); ?>">
</li>
<?php endforeach;
endif;
?>
</ul>
2. Make It Responsive
To ensure the masonry layout adapts to different screen sizes, update your CSS like this:
@media (max-width: 1024px) {
.masonry-gallery {
column-count: 2;
}
}
@media (max-width: 768px) {
.masonry-gallery {
column-count: 1;
}
}
Conclusion
Creating a masonry gallery in WordPress using only CSS is finally easy thanks to the columns
property. While we still don’t have display: masonry;
supported in browsers, this method works today without the bloat of JavaScript libraries. If you’re building a WordPress theme or a simple gallery page, try this out—it’s lightweight, responsive, and future-proof.