Most people obsess over what their CV says and ignore how it sits on the page. Yet a recruiter forms an impression in the first few seconds, and cramped text works against you before a single word gets read. Getting your cv margins and spacing right is the cheapest way to look more senior than the person next to you in the stack.
Start with margins, then defend them
The safe default is a 1 inch margin (about 2.5 cm) on all four sides. It reads as balanced on both A4 and US Letter, and it gives ATS software a clean text block to parse.
You can go tighter when you genuinely need the room. Dropping to 1.5 cm (roughly 0.6 inch) is fine on the left and right, and even the top and bottom can come down to about 1.2 cm without looking squeezed. Below that, two things break. The page starts to feel airless, and some ATS parsers that rely on positional boundaries get confused when text runs to the very edge.
A few practical rules:
- Keep top and bottom margins roughly equal so the page looks anchored, not top-heavy.
- If you use a header or footer with your name and contact details, measure the margin from the body text, not from the header.
- Never shrink margins below 1 cm just to save one line. It always shows.
Line spacing that a human can actually read
Body text wants line spacing between 1.0 and 1.15. Single spacing (1.0) is dense but acceptable for a one-page CV with short lines. I usually settle on 1.08 to 1.15 because it opens the text up just enough that the eye does not lose its place mid-line.
Font size and line spacing work as a pair. At 10 to 11 pt body text, 1.15 spacing feels right. If you push the font down to 9.5 pt to fit more in, bump spacing up slightly so the lines do not collide. Anything under 9.5 pt is a readability problem, not a spacing one.
For bullet points, add a touch of space between bullets, around 3 to 4 pt, rather than stretching the lines inside a bullet. That keeps each item visually distinct while the wrapped lines within one bullet stay tight.
Space between sections is where scanning happens
This is the setting most people forget, and it does more for cv layout white space than margins do.
Recruiters do not read a CV top to bottom. They scan for section headers, land on the one they want, and read from there. Clear gaps between blocks give the eye those landing points.
- Put 12 to 18 pt of space above each section heading (Experience, Education, Skills). This is the biggest gap on the page and that is correct.
- Use 6 to 8 pt above each job entry inside a section, so individual roles separate without floating apart.
- Keep the space below a heading small, around 3 to 4 pt, so the heading stays attached to the content it introduces.
That last point matters. A heading with equal space above and below looks orphaned. More space above than below tells the reader where one section ends and the next begins.
Why white space helps the machine too
White space is not only an aesthetic choice. ATS parsers segment your CV by looking for gaps and consistent formatting. When your sections are visually distinct, the parser is more likely to file your job titles, dates, and bullet content into the right fields.
Cramming text edge to edge, or using multi-column layouts to pack more in, is where parsing tends to fall apart. A clean single-column layout with real gaps between sections is easier for both the recruiter and the software. Tools that build a CV from your LinkedIn data, Postulit among them, tend to default to this kind of structured spacing for exactly that reason.
If a section looks distinct to your eye at arm's length, it usually parses cleanly too. The two goals rarely conflict.
The mistakes that give you away
A short list of what to avoid, drawn from CVs that look amateur at a glance:
- Shrinking margins to 0.5 cm to force a second page onto one. Reviewers notice the wall of text immediately.
- Zero space between sections, so Experience, Skills, and Education blur into one column of gray.
- Inconsistent gaps, where one job has a big gap above it and the next has none. Pick a value and apply it everywhere.
- Stretching line spacing to 1.5 or 2.0 to fill a thin CV. It reads as padding, and it does.
- Justified body text, which creates uneven rivers of white space between words. Left-align instead.
Balancing density against readability
The real tension is fitting enough content without suffocating it. My rule of thumb: if you are choosing between a slightly smaller font and slightly tighter section spacing, cut the font first, down to about 10 pt, before you touch the gaps between sections. The section gaps are what make the page scannable, so they are the last thing to sacrifice.
If you are still overflowing, the problem is usually content, not layout. Trim old roles to two lines, drop the objective statement, and remove skills that repeat what your experience already proves.
The takeaway: set 2.5 cm margins, 1.1 line spacing, and about 14 pt of space above each section heading, then only tighten from there if a specific line forces you to. Get those three numbers right and your CV looks composed before anyone reads a word of it.