# Banded pairs > Three full-width bands stacked with no gap between them, alternating between your base and your contrast colour, each holding a pair of 3:2 photograph frames with a tracked caps label, a short heading and a caption under each frame. The hard edge where one band meets the next is the only rule in the design. Includes replaceable example images. States no colour and no font of its own. Canonical: https://patternpaste.com/pattern/banded-pairs.html Section: Gallery Access: Included in Pattern Paste access. Needs: Requires a block theme on WordPress 7.0 to 7.1. Classic themes and page builders are outside our supported setup. Adaptive patterns use the block theme’s colour, spacing and typography presets; styled variations declare their own colours or type. Blocks: column, columns, group, heading, image, paragraph Keywords: gallery, bands, stripe, pairs, chapters, photo, caption ## Variations (2) ### Light, dark, light (the default) Identical markup in every theme. The first and third bands sit on your base colour and the middle one inverts to your contrast, so the section reads light, dark, light. Every line inside the inverted band, the heading included, states its own colour, so no theme's heading style can paint it into its own ground. On a phone each band's two frames stack and the bands get taller; the stripe is unchanged, because it is made of ground rather than layout. ### Inverted bands Identical markup in every theme. The stripe phase flips: the first and third bands go on your contrast colour and the middle one on your base, so the section reads dark, light, dark. Same six frames, same proportions, same captions; only the colour relationship changes. Use it when the section above ends light and you want the join to land as an edge rather than a continuation. --- ## The signature moment: the gallery is striped, and the stripe is the structure Nothing separates the three pairs but a change of ground. There is no rule, no gutter, no card and no border anywhere in the section; the only mark in the design is the line where one band's ground stops and the next one's starts. That is what makes six photographs read as three chapters rather than as a grid of six: the eye groups the pair that shares a ground, and the edge below it says the next pair is a different subject. **It survives colourlessness because it is made of the only two colours every theme has.** `base` and `contrast` are the sole universal slugs in the preset contract, and alternating between them is the one colour move that always arrives: a theme cannot resolve it to nothing, and it cannot resolve it to two colours that look alike, because a theme that made its ground and its ink alike would be unreadable everywhere else too. Every other colour device in a pattern depends on a slug that may or may not exist and may land at any luminance. This one is guaranteed by construction, which is why the stripe is the structure and not the decoration on top of it. **It survives 390px** because the stripe is made of ground rather than layout. Below 782px core stacks each band's `core/columns`, so the two frames sit one above the other, each still carrying its caption; the band simply gets taller. The band's own ground grows with it, the padding does not stack, and the two hard edges stay exactly where they were, full width. On a phone the section reads as three tall chapters instead of three wide ones, which is the same argument at a different aspect. ## How the bands are butted, and the traps that are avoided - **The parent adds no gap.** The outer `core/group` is `align: full`, layout `default`, `blockGap: "0"` and zero padding on all four sides, so WordPress's flow-layout gap rule between its children resolves to nothing and the bands touch. A `core/separator` cannot do this job at all: it is a line between two things, not the absence of a space, and Twenty Twenty-Four narrows any separator that is not `is-style-wide` to a centred stub. - **Each band owns its own edges.** Every band is its own `align: full` group with its own ground, its own `spacing|70` top and bottom padding and its own `clamp(1.25rem, 4vw, 4rem)` gutters, with a nested constrained layout at 1240px. The colour therefore runs to the viewport edge while the content stays on the measure, which is the only way the hard edge reads as full width. - **The inverted band states its type on every block inside it, headings included.** A theme's heading element style beats a colour inherited from a wrapping group, so a heading left to inherit lands the same colour as its own band at ratio 1.0, invisible and with nothing to flag it. So the label, the heading and both captions in band two each carry an explicit `base` chain, and the same is true of whichever bands are inverted in the variation. - **Vertical rhythm is inline, not inherited.** The heading states `margin-top: var(--wp--preset--spacing--20)` and `margin-bottom: 0`, and the `core/columns` states `margin-top: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50)` and `margin-bottom: 0`, so the spacing inside a band does not depend on which layout gap a theme happens to apply. ## What it inherits, what it decides **Inherits:** the typeface and its weights, the resolved value of `base` and `contrast`, the spacing scale behind presets 20 to 70, and the stacking threshold for `core/columns`. **Decides:** the striped structure and its phase; the 3:2 crop on all six frames with `scale: cover`, so whatever the buyer uploads is cropped to the proportion the pairs need; the 13px tracked caps label at `0.22em`; a heading ramp of `clamp(1.625rem, 3vw, 2.5rem)` at `-0.025em` and line-height 1.08; and captions at `clamp(0.9375rem, 1.05vw, 1.0625rem)`, whose floor is 15px so the lines stay above the responsive floor on a phone. Contrast is claimed at 4.5:1 throughout: every string in the section is a label, a caption or a heading set on its band's own ground, which is a `base` chain under a `contrast` chain or the inverse. Nothing in the pattern sits on a photograph, and there is no accent slug anywhere in it, in any rung. ## What a buyer changes first The six photographs. Every image block includes an example photograph, with the 3:2 crop and cover setting already set. Select a frame and choose Replace to use your own file. After that, the copy: three labels (keep them short, they are tracked caps and are meant to be glanced at rather than read), three chapter headings, six captions. The pattern will take a fourth band if the story needs one, but the phase has to keep alternating: duplicate a band, swap its ground chain and its type chain, and change the four colours in it so the stripe stays honest. Last, the phase itself, which is the variation below. ## Variations **Inverted bands** (`variations/bands-inverted.html`). The stripe phase flips. Bands one and three go on the `contrast` chain with `base` type, and band two onto `base` with `contrast` type, so the section reads dark, light, dark instead of light, dark, light. The composition, the six frames, the proportions and the copy are identical; the only thing that changes is the colour relationship, and that is deliberate: the base and the variation are the two answers to how the section joins whatever sits above it on the page. Where the base's first edge is soft against a light page, the variation's is the edge itself. ## Included images The copied markup includes WordPress Photo Directory example photographs. The public image URLs keep the examples visible after pasting. Select an image or cover and choose **Replace** to use your own Media Library files. See [image credits](/image-credits/) for the sources and licenses. Pasting an image URL does not import a Media Library attachment.