Bootstrap: Is there a way to get a tighter layout?

Bootstrap doesn't recommend editing bootstrap.css itself. It is recommended per best practices to modify the bootstrap style in another, dominant CSS file.

Try doing something like this:

Custom CSS

input[type=text]{
   padding:0px;
   margin-bottom:2px; /* Reduced from whatever it currently is */
   margin-top:2px; /* Reduced from whatever it currently is */
}

It's hard to tell from the picture if it's a margin on the top or bottom. You can remove the margin-[top|bottom] based on what the result of your testing is.

It's also possible that the input element isn't the one with a margin, it could be the label element instead (Bootstrap, at least in my experiences, does some strange things with the label element...)

Another edit: I like to give people options. Therefore, if this is in a table element, consider adding the table-condensed class to the table tag to reduce some of the whitespace between items, as shown below:

<table class="table table-condensed">