Let’s pretend you’re graphing age distributions for a given county.

You carefully formatted your histogram: you removed the border, lightened the grid lines, wrote a descriptive title and subtitle, selected customized RGB color codes, and called attention to a section of the graph with the saturated action color…

… but your chart still looks weird because the bars are so far apart. What’s with all that empty white space in between the vertical bars?!

By default, Excel spaces the bars 150% apart from each other. If each bar is 1 centimeter wide, then the space between the bars will be 1.5 centimeters wide.

This huge space looks odd in a regular bar chart and horrible in a histogram. Histograms, in particular, are supposed to be smushed together. Our eyes are supposed to see the distribution as a seamless, unified shape rather than as a bunch of distinct bars.

Why are the bars so far apart?! By default, Excel spaces the bars 150% apart from each other. If each bar is 1 centimeter wide, then the space between the bars will be 1.5 centimeters wide.

 

Let’s reduce that spacing! Here’s how:

Step 1. Right-click on any of the colored bars. In the drop-down menu, select Format Data Series.

To reduce the white spacing in between the bars in your histogram, right-click on any of the colored bars and select "Format Data Series."

2. Reduce the Gap Width.

“Gap Width” is a jargony name that simply refers to the size of the spacing or gap in between the columns. Excel’s default setting is typically around 150%.

Reduce the Gap Width from 150% to 30-50% for regular bar charts and from 150% to 5-15% for histograms.

Reduce the Gap Width—from 150% to 30-50% for regular bar charts and from 150% to 5-15% for histograms.

 

Try various spacing options and see which one you (and your boss and viewers) like the best. There’s no absolute right answer on this; it’s aesthetic preferences. Do aim for consistency within the same final product. For instance, you would’nt have a Gap Width of 5% for the histogram on the first page of your report and a Gap Width of 15% for the histogram on the second page of your report. Choose one width and make sure everyone on your team formats their graphs accordingly.

In this example, I reduced the Gap Width to 10%.

In this example, I reduced the Gap Width to 10%.

 


Purchase the spreadsheet ($5)