an email centered with a 600 pixel width -- don't make them any wider. Use tables for layout We're going back to the nineties here, as you can see above the layout is structured with tables. Use the table tag ( &lt;table&gt; ) to begin with, then order the rows of the table with the table row tag ( &lt;tr&gt; ) and then sort the individual cells of the table with the table data tag ( &lt;td&gt; ). Use rowspan="2" to merge a cell (or a td ) over two rows and colspan="2" to merge a cell or a td over two columns. Use percentages for widths After you have specified the width of the whole of the email in pixels table width="600" (and notice you only put "600" and not "600px" ), specify all other widths of table s or td s as percentages. So use &lt;table width="50%"&gt; or &lt;td width="33%"&gt; to divide up your email into halves and thirds. Use cellpadding to space text away from the edge of the table . Always use absolute paths for images Bring in images like this: &lt;img src="http://www.website.com/html-email/i\\... not like this: &lt;img src="images/image.gif"&gt; Never use padding, margin or floats round images This will not work in Outlook. Instead you can get an image to go on the left with align="left" and put a "margin" around it so that text doesn't butt up next to it with vspace and hspace . So this code: This is a limited solution as vspace and