115
votes

I have a formatting question for my Java swing application. It should be fairly straightforward, but I am having difficulty finding any aid (Every topic seems to be regarding removing any default padding in JPanel).

The text in my various JPanels hug the sides and top, touching the colored borders: how can I add padding?

4

4 Answers

253
votes

Set an EmptyBorder around your JPanel.
Example:

JPanel p =new JPanel();
p.setBorder(new EmptyBorder(10, 10, 10, 10));
3
votes

When you need padding inside the JPanel generally you add padding with the layout manager you are using. There are cases that you can just expand the border of the JPanel.

3
votes

I will suppose your JPanel contains JTextField, for the sake of the demo.

Those components provides JTextComponent#setMargin() method which seems to be what you're looking for.

If you're looking for an empty border of any size around your text, well, use EmptyBorder

0
votes
JPanel p=new JPanel();  
GridBagLayout layout=new GridBagLayout(); 
p.setLayout(layout); 
GridBagConstraints gbc = new GridBagConstraints();
gbc.fill=GridBagConstraints.HORIZONTAL; 
gbc.gridx=0;   
gbc.gridy=0;   
p2.add("",gbc);