Single post layout
Appearance → Customize → Single post → Layout.
| Layout | |
|---|---|
| Narrow (reading width) | A centred reading column, no sidebar. The default |
| Full width | The whole container width, no sidebar |
| Sidebar right | Content left, sidebar right |
| Sidebar left | Sidebar left, content right |
This is the default for every post. It is separate from the blog listing’s layout and from pages, so a wide grid of posts leading to narrow reading pages is a perfectly normal arrangement — and a common one.
Narrow is usually right
620px is roughly 65–75 characters a line, which is the measure typography has settled on for long-form reading. Widening a post column past that costs comprehension; it does not gain anything.
Reach for Full width when a post is a photo essay, or leans on wide and full-aligned blocks. Note that a narrow post already lets a block go wide or full — see Wide and full width — so you usually do not need the full-width layout just for one big image.
Reach for a sidebar when you have something genuinely useful to put in it: a newsletter form, related posts, an author card. A sidebar of stock widgets beside a reading column is a cost with no return.
Overriding it on one post
In the post editor, the Post options box in the settings sidebar carries a Layout radio group:
- — Site default — (selected) follows the Customizer setting above
- Narrow / Full width / Sidebar right / Sidebar left
Pick one and this post alone uses it. Set it back to Site default and the post follows the site again — including if you later change the site default, which is what makes “site default” different from picking the same value by hand.
This is the setting for the one photo essay in a text blog.
The editor canvas follows it
Choose Full width in the Post options box and the block editor canvas widens immediately, so you are editing at the width the post will actually render at. The same happens when the site default is itself a full-width layout.
If the sidebar is empty
A sidebar layout with nothing in the widget area falls back to the narrow column. See Enable the sidebar.