CSS Padding

 

The CSS padding properties are used to generate space around an element's content, inside of any defined borders.

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With CSS, you have full control over the padding. There are properties for setting the padding for each side of an element (top, right, bottom, and left).

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Padding - Individual Sides

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CSS has properties for specifying the padding for each side of an element:

 

padding-top

padding-right

padding-bottom

padding-left

 

All the padding properties can have the following values:

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length - specifies a padding in px, pt, cm, etc.

% - specifies a padding in % of the width of the containing element

inherit - specifies that the padding should be inherited from the parent element

 

EXAMPLE:

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div {
  padding-top: 50px;
  padding-right: 30px;
  padding-bottom: 50px;
  padding-left: 80px;
}

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Padding - Shorthand Property

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To shorten the code, it is possible to specify all the padding properties in one property.

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EXAMPLE:

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Use the padding shorthand property with four values:

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div {
  padding: 25px 50px 75px 100px;
}

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Use the padding shorthand property with three values:

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div {
  padding: 25px 50px 75px;
}

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Use the padding shorthand property with two values:

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div {
  padding: 25px 50px;
}

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Use the padding shorthand property with one value:

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div {
  padding: 25px;
}

​

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Padding and Element Width

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The CSS width property specifies the width of the element's content area. The content area is the portion inside the padding, border, and margin of an element.

 

So, if an element has a specified width, the padding added to that element will be added to the total width of the element. This is often an undesirable result.

 

EXAMPLE:

 

Here, the <div> element is given a width of 300px. However, the actual width of the <div> element will be 350px (300px + 25px of left padding + 25px of right padding):

div {
  width: 300px;
  padding: 25px;
}

 

To keep the width at 300px, no matter the amount of padding, you can use the box-sizing property. This causes the element to maintain its width; if you increase the padding, the available content space will decrease.

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EXAMPLE: 

 

Use the box-sizing property to keep the width at 300px, no matter the amount of padding:

div {
  width: 300px;
  padding: 25px;
  box-sizing: border-box;
}