---
name: Layer cake pattern
slug: layer-cake-pattern
category: layout
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: A scanning shape where the eye reads headings and subheadings and
  skips the text between them, so the fixation map looks like stacked layers.
aliases:
  - name: layer cake scanning
    source: community
tags:
  - perception
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - f-pattern
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - heading-hierarchy
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: "Text Scanning Patterns: Eyetracking Evidence, NN/g"
    url: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/text-scanning-patterns-eyetracking/
  - title: F-Shaped Pattern of Reading on the Web, NN/g
    url: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content/
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: predicting a skim that only reads headings
---

Put subheadings down a page of text and the gaze plot separates into bands: a run of
fixations along each heading, almost nothing in the paragraphs between them, then the next
heading. Nielsen Norman Group named the shape the layer cake, and unlike most of the scanning
patterns it is a compliment to the page. It means the reader found a table of contents built
into the text and used it, sampling the headings to decide where to stop, which is the
behaviour good subheadings are for.

It also sets the standard subheadings are held to. If the layers are the only thing being
read, then a heading has to survive being read alone, out of order, with none of the
paragraph under it. "Fees and deposits" survives. "A note on the above" does not, and neither
does a heading that is really a joke whose punchline is in the first sentence. The same test
kills the decorative subheading that repeats the section's first line, because a layer that
adds nothing is a layer the eye stops trusting, and once two are ignored the reader goes back
to skimming the left edge.

Take the subheadings out and the pattern collapses. The eye has nothing to sample, so it
falls back to the [F pattern](/f-pattern): a sweep or two across the top, then a run down
the left picking up first words. That is the whole argument for a
[heading hierarchy](/heading-hierarchy) in body content, and it is why the fix for a wall of
text is rarely shorter sentences. It is structure the scan can land on, which also means
enough space above each heading that it belongs to what follows rather than floating between
two paragraphs.

Eye tracking has named a handful of these shapes, and between them they cover most of what
people actually do with text. The [F pattern](/f-pattern), the
[Z pattern](/z-pattern) and the [Gutenberg diagram](/gutenberg-diagram) describe the page as
a whole; layer cake, [spotted](/spotted-pattern), [bypassing](/bypassing-pattern),
[lawn mower](/lawn-mower-pattern), [marking](/marking-pattern) and
[commitment](/commitment-pattern) describe what happens inside a block of text. Only the
last of those is reading.