Nav bar: WordPress Block Pattern, Pattern Paste Canonical: https://patternpaste.com/pattern/nav-bar.html Core Patterns (https://patternpaste.com/patterns/) Header (https://patternpaste.com/patterns/nav/) Free Standard # Nav bar A header bar on one line: a heavy, tightly tracked wordmark at the left edge against tiny widely tracked links at the right, one solid action beside them, and a hairline under the whole bar. The links are your WordPress menu, a core navigation block that folds to a menu button on a phone so the bar stays one line. Compact by construction, so it reads as the top of a page and never as a hero. ## All patterns Search patterns Loading patterns… Start here ## What to change first - The wordmark. Replace "Hallmere". - The menu. Select the navigation block, then Menu, and point it at yours. - The action's label and link. The button ships without a URL. - The bar's weight. If your theme's face is already heavy, step the wordmark from 800 to 700 rather than making the links smaller: the links are at their floor. The signature moment ## The scale collision on one line The signature is two type sizes with nothing between them, on the same baseline. The wordmark is a heading on your theme's x-large rung, up to 36px; the links beside it are set at 15px, uppercase, at 0.22em, which is the widest tracking anywhere in this pattern's family. There is no mid-size text on the line to soften the jump, so the eye reads the name as a mark and the links as a legend under a drawing. In a colourless design that jump is the whole of the composition: nothing here is tinted, boxed or shadowed to make it work. Theme handoff ## What comes from where ### From your theme - The typeface. - Your colours. - Your menu. - Your button. ### Set by this pattern - Full bleed with its own 1240px inner. - Compact padding. - The 15px floor on the links. - The action inverts. - How it behaves at 390. Full pattern notes ## Why it works, and how it is built Open a topic for the complete design reasoning, editing guidance and implementation notes. Design rationaleComposition, intent and nearest alternatives ### Overview The bar at the top of a page: the name, four ways through the site, one action, and a hairline under all of it. It is deliberately the shortest section in the catalogue. A header that grows tall stops being a header, so every measurement in it is chosen to keep the bar under about 80px at desktop. ### The signature moment: the scale collision on one line The signature is two type sizes with nothing between them, on the same baseline. The wordmark is a heading on your theme's x-large rung, up to 36px; the links beside it are set at 15px, uppercase, at 0.22em, which is the widest tracking anywhere in this pattern's family. There is no mid-size text on the line to soften the jump, so the eye reads the name as a mark and the links as a legend under a drawing. In a colourless design that jump is the whole of the composition: nothing here is tinted, boxed or shadowed to make it work. The hairline is the second half of it. It is a 1px currentColor border on the bar itself, not a separator block, so it cannot be narrowed by a theme that restyles separators, and it follows the text colour wherever the theme puts it. Make it yoursVariations and the edits to make first ### What to change first - The wordmark. Replace "Hallmere". It is a heading, so if you have a logo image instead, swap the heading for an image block and keep the row. - The menu. Select the navigation block, then Menu, and point it at yours. Keep the labels to one word each: at 0.22em tracking a two-word label eats the line. Four items is the number this composition is tuned for; five still fits at 1400 and wraps sooner on a laptop. - The action's label and link. The button ships without a URL. Make the label a verb. - The bar's weight. If your theme's face is already heavy, step the wordmark from 800 to 700 rather than making the links smaller: the links are at their floor. ### Variations - Mark right. The same bar mirrored: links and action first from the left, the wordmark hard against the right edge. One structural change and nothing else; the colours, the type and the hairline are identical to the base. - Navy and sky (Styled). Brings its own colours and face for a trades firm or a clinic: #13294b navy ground, #ffffff type, a #bcd7f2 sky hairline and a sky Get a quote button in navy with 4px corners, set in Avenir Next falling to Helvetica and Arial. The navigation block states its overlay colours too, so the phone menu opens navy with white links. Its matching bottom is Footer strip in Navy and sky. Every pair measured at AA on the painted values; the lowest is the button, 9.8:1. Theme behaviourInheritance, fixed decisions and contrast ### What it inherits from your theme - The typeface. No family is stated anywhere. The collision is built from weight, size and tracking, so it survives a serif theme and a sans one. - Your colours. The ground asks for base, the type asks for contrast, and each falls back to a colour WordPress itself guarantees, so the bar cannot blank. - Your menu. The links are a core/navigation block, so the bar shows the menu your site has, not four words somebody typed into this file. With no menu assigned core falls back to a list of your pages, which is why the preview shows our sample site's three; pick or create a menu in the editor and every page using this bar follows it. The block asks for your theme's link colour and falls back to contrast, and the hamburger it prints on a phone takes the same ink. - Your button. The action is a core button. Its corners are squared here, but its padding rhythm, its hover state and its focus ring are your theme's. ### What it decides for itself - Full bleed with its own 1240px inner. The bar spans the viewport and holds its content to a measure, which is what makes it a bar rather than a column. - Compact padding. clamp(0.875rem, 1.4vw, 1.25rem) top and bottom, stated rather than taken from a spacing preset, because a theme with a generous scale would turn preset 40 into a band. The horizontal padding is the usual clamp(1.25rem, 4vw, 4rem) so the bar's edges line up with the sections under it. - The 15px floor on the links. A bare small preset is 13px in a theme with no scale, which is under the readable floor, so the navigation block states max(0.9375rem, 15px) with the weight, tracking and case beside it. Core sets every item at its line-height, so the links are text-height targets on a phone the way every core menu is; on a phone they are behind the menu button anyway. - The action inverts. The button takes the contrast ground and base text, so it is the one solid object on the bar and it cannot vanish into it: the two chains are each other's opposites in any theme. - How it behaves at 390. The navigation block is set to overlayMenu: mobile, so below 600px core swaps the links for its menu button and the bar stays ONE line: the wordmark at the left, the button and the action together at the right, which is the behaviour a buyer expects of a header. The button opens core's full-screen overlay, white with your links in black, and closes with its own cross or Escape. The right-hand cluster never wraps; the row it sits in still can, so a theme with enormous type drops the cluster under the name rather than off the edge. Measured at 390 in both stock themes: one line, no overflow. Technical notesBlock mechanics, responsive behaviour and constraints ### Notes - Core blocks only: group, heading, navigation, buttons, button. No plugin; the menu button is core's own, driven by WordPress's Interactivity API. - Every colour is a fallback chain ending on a core-guaranteed colour, and the hairline is currentColor, which cannot resolve to nothing. - No text sits on an accent, in any rung. There is no accent in this pattern. Questions ## Nav bar: common questions Does Nav bar need a plugin? No. It is built only from core WordPress blocks (button, buttons, group, heading and navigation), so it pastes into the block editor with nothing to install. Will Nav bar match my theme? Choose by variation. Name left and Mark right take your theme’s palette; Folio, Mend and Navy and sky bring its own colours. How many variations does Nav bar have? 5: Name left, Folio, Mark right, Mend and Navy and sky. Each is its own markup; choose one in the toolbar above the preview before you copy. Is Nav bar free? Yes. It is one of 62 free Core Patterns: copy it and it is yours to keep and edit. Its Styled looks come with a subscription. Which WordPress version does it need? 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. Back to Core Patterns (https://patternpaste.com/patterns/) ### Free pattern Copy it and paste it straight into the block editor. It is yours to keep and edit. Its Styled looks come with a subscription. Read the markup Catalogue access ### £49 a year All patterns, variations and theme downloads. What you copy is yours forever. Not for you? We refund within 14 days. Subscribe, £49 a year (https://patternpaste.com/account/#plan) Sign in (https://patternpaste.com/account/) Everything you copy is yours to keep, forever, on any site; access to the rest of the library runs while you subscribe. Not for you? Tell us within 14 days of a payment and we refund you. After that, cancelling stops the next renewal and access runs to the end of the year you have paid for. Prices are in pounds and are the full price in the UK, the US and eleven other countries; elsewhere the checkout adds your local VAT or sales tax. The terms name every country. #### Pair with Hero Hero aperture An opening section on your theme's own paper: a tracked line, a display headline, one short paragraph on a reading measure, and then a picture that stops short of the edge on every side. The signature is the margin: the image is a window cut in the page rather than a band across it, and the paper around it is what you notice. A small opaque plate in the picture's bottom-right corner carries the caption, so no type ever sits on the photograph. The still-image version includes an example photograph; select your own clip for the video version. States no colour and no font of its own. (https://patternpaste.com/pattern/hero-aperture.html)Page header Page header cover strip An interior-page opener with a small location label, h1 title and short introduction in a narrow full-height plate of your theme's base beside a broad uninterrupted photograph. The photograph stays dominant on wide screens; on a phone the title strip reads first. Includes a replaceable example photograph. States no colour and no font of its own. (https://patternpaste.com/pattern/page-header-cover-strip.html)Editorial Article footer The close of an article: a portrait of the author beside their name, the biography under both inside a currentColor slip held to the middle half of the measure, and the previous and the next post hanging off the two outer edges so the section reads as a doorway rather than a footer. The name, the biography and the two neighbours are dynamic core blocks, so they are the post's own and the preview here is sample data; the portrait is an ordinary image block you swap for your author's own. The previous and next links only resolve on a single post template, which is where this pattern belongs. (https://patternpaste.com/pattern/article-footer.html) #### Before you paste 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. How we test patterns (https://patternpaste.com/how-we-test/) ## Specifications Section Header Access Free Plugin None, core blocks only Variations 5 Colour From your theme or its own palette Type From your theme or its own type Motion None Blocks button, buttons, group, heading, navigation Presets color 5, font-size 1 WordPress 7.0+ Continue exploring ## Next in Header Explore all 6 Header patterns (https://patternpaste.com/patterns/nav/) Shot in Twenty Twenty-Five Header No plugin needed ### Header wayfinding plaque A projecting nameplate beside two stacked routes: the visitor menu above a ruled contact and booking rail. Header Preview pattern (https://patternpaste.com/pattern/nav-wayfinding-plaque.html) Shot in Twenty Twenty-Five Header No plugin needed ### Nav menu The header that drives a real menu: your site logo and name at the left, your WordPress navigation menu standing against a full-height currentColor hairline, and a search field with a visible label behind it. Header Preview pattern (https://patternpaste.com/pattern/nav-menu.html) Shot in Twenty Twenty-Five Header No plugin needed ### Nav stack A header built as a masthead rather than an app bar: a micro-row of tracked uppercase meta (address, hours, telephone) sits over a hairline, and under it the main row carries the wordmark, your WordPress menu and one filled action over a 3px rule. Header Preview pattern (https://patternpaste.com/pattern/nav-stack.html)