Negative space — also called white space — is every area of a page where there's nothing: the margins around text blocks, the padding inside buttons, the gaps between sections, the breathing room around a headline. It's called "negative" because it's defined by absence, but it's one of the most positive things you can add to a landing page.
The instinct to fill every pixel with content is the #1 design mistake on landing pages we audit. Stakeholders look at empty space and think "we're wasting that." But research consistently shows the opposite: increased negative space around content improves comprehension by up to 20% (Wichita State University study). When text has room to breathe, people actually read it.
Strategic negative space for conversions
The highest-impact use of negative space is around your CTA. A button surrounded by generous whitespace gets noticed. A button crammed between a paragraph and a testimonial gets lost. When we predict heatmaps, isolated CTAs with significant surrounding space consistently show higher fixation density than identically-styled buttons in cluttered sections.
The practical approach: increase section padding by 50% from whatever you have now. Increase line-height on body text to at least 1.6. Add at least 2rem of margin below every heading. Then look at the result. If it feels "too empty" to you, it probably looks just right to your visitors, who are scanning at speed and deciding in seconds whether to engage or bounce.