Building Arabic and right-to-left websites properly
By The AsasWeb team 1 min read
A proper Arabic website mirrors the entire layout, not just the text. Navigation, icons, and spacing must flip with the reading direction, which is cleanest with CSS logical properties, and every page must declare the correct lang and dir attributes so browsers and screen readers behave correctly. Arabic also needs its own typeface choices and line heights, and the only reliable check is reviewing every page in Arabic on real screen sizes.
Adding Arabic to a website is often treated as translating the text and calling it done. A genuinely good right-to-left site needs more, because the whole layout has to mirror, and the details are where most attempts fall down. This is something we build often, including the site you are reading.
Mirror the layout, not just the words
In a right-to-left language the reading direction flips, so the layout must flip with it. Navigation, icons, progress steps, and spacing all move to mirror the new direction. The clean way to achieve this is CSS logical properties, which let one set of components render correctly in both directions without duplicated styles.
Set the language and direction correctly
Each page must declare the correct language and direction on the HTML element, so browsers and screen readers switch reading direction and voice. This is a small detail with a large effect on how the page is announced and understood.
Typography deserves care
Arabic has its own typographic needs, from the right typeface to line height and the way numerals and punctuation behave in mixed content. A font chosen for Latin text rarely does Arabic justice, so we choose and tune type for each script.
Test in the language, not in theory
The only reliable check is to review every page in Arabic, right to left, on real screen sizes. Layout that looks fine mirrored in a tool can still break with real content, so we review it page by page.
We build multilingual sites, including right-to-left Arabic, from the foundation up rather than as an add-on. See the approach in our multilingual SEO guide, or start a project to reach an Arabic-speaking market properly.