---
name: False bottom
slug: false-bottom
category: pattern
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: A page that looks finished at a point where content actually
  continues, so the reader stops scrolling and never sees the rest.
aliases:
  - name: false floor
    source: community
  - name: illusion of completeness
    source: nngroup
  - name: premature end
    source: community
  - name: suggesting continuity
    source: goodui
tags:
  - errors
  - perception
  - scroll
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - the-fold
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - infinite-scroll
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: "GoodUI: Try Suggesting Continuity instead of false bottoms"
    url: https://goodui.org/
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: the page looks like it ended but has not
---

A false bottom is a place on a page that reads as the end of it. The reader arrives, sees
what looks like a closing band, and stops, and everything below that line might as well not
have been published. Nielsen Norman Group calls the same thing the illusion of
completeness, which names the mechanism well: nothing is hidden, and the reader has simply
been given every visual signal that there is nothing more to look for.

The ingredients are ordinary and that is the problem. A full-bleed band in a different
colour, a generous stretch of whitespace, a centred rule, a logo or a sign-off sitting on
its own, a row of links that resembles a footer, a section that happens to fill the last of
the viewport. Any one of them is fine somewhere else on the page. Together, and landing near
the bottom edge of a screen size the designer did not test, they compose an ending. Most
false bottoms are accidents of styling rather than acts of malice, which is exactly why the
term is worth having: nobody in the room decided to do it, so nobody notices until someone
names the thing that happened.

It is worth keeping distinct from the boundary it exploits. [The fold](/the-fold) is where
the viewport happens to end, which changes with every window and is nobody's design; a false
bottom is a design that claims the content ends there. The fold is a fact about the reader's
screen, the false bottom is a sentence the page is saying, and the sentence is wrong.

When it stops being an accident it joins other company. A page that puts the decline option
below a convincing ending is running [misdirection](/misdirection) with layout instead of
contrast, and at that point it is a [dark pattern](/dark-pattern) rather than a slip. The
repair is the same either way, and it is cheap: suggest continuity. Cut the whitespace at
the boundary, keep the closing band for the actual close, and let the next block break the
line, because half a visible card is the strongest instruction to keep scrolling that a page
can give.