A RecyclerView.ItemDecoration that adds 8 dp padding to the top of the first and bottom of the last item in a list (or RecyclerView in this case).

ListPaddingDecoration.java

import android.content.Context;
import android.graphics.Rect;
import android.support.annotation.NonNull;
import android.support.v7.widget.RecyclerView;
import android.util.DisplayMetrics;
import android.util.TypedValue;
import android.view.View;

/**
 * Adds 8dp padding to the top of the first and the bottom of the last item in the list,
 * as specified in https://www.google.com/design/spec/components/lists.html#lists-specs
 */
public class ListPaddingDecoration extends RecyclerView.ItemDecoration {
    private final static int PADDING_IN_DIPS = 8;
    private final int mPadding;

    public ListPaddingDecoration(@NonNull Context context) {
        DisplayMetrics metrics = context.getResources().getDisplayMetrics();
        mPadding = (int) TypedValue.applyDimension(TypedValue.COMPLEX_UNIT_DIP, PADDING_IN_DIPS, metrics);
    }

    @Override
    public void getItemOffsets(Rect outRect, View view, RecyclerView parent, RecyclerView.State state) {
        final int itemPosition = parent.getChildAdapterPosition(view);
        if (itemPosition == RecyclerView.NO_POSITION) {
            return;
        }
        if (itemPosition == 0) {
            outRect.top = mPadding;
        }

        final RecyclerView.Adapter adapter = parent.getAdapter();
        if ((adapter != null) && (itemPosition == adapter.getItemCount() - 1)) {
            outRect.bottom = mPadding;
        }
    }

}