What Is Line Height?
Line height is the vertical space between lines of text, controlled by the CSS line-height property. Too tight, and lines overlap or feel cramped; too loose, and paragraphs feel disconnected and hard to scan. Getting line height right affects both readability and how polished a design feels.
As a rule of thumb, Latin text (English, etc.) reads well at about 1.5x the font size for body copy, Korean at about 1.6x, and Japanese or Chinese text with kanji at about 1.7x. CJK characters are built from square, block-shaped glyphs that are visually denser than Latin letters, so they need extra breathing room. Large heading text looks more stable at a tighter ratio, around 1.2 to 1.35x.
This calculator takes your font size, language, and usage (body or heading) and returns the recommended line-height as both a pixel value and a unitless CSS ratio. Copy the CSS value directly into your stylesheet.
Frequently Asked Questions
Too tight feels cramped, too loose hurts readability. A good range is 1.4-1.8x the font size.
Block-shaped glyphs are visually denser, so they need about 10-15% more line-height than Latin text.
Yes — headings work well at 1.2-1.3x, while body text needs 1.5-1.8x.