bugl
bugl
HomeLearnPatternsSearch
HomeLearnPatternsSearch

Loading lesson path

Learn/CSS/CSS Foundations
CSS•CSS Foundations

CSS Inheritance

Concept visual

CSS Inheritance

Graph traversalgraph
ABCDE
current
queued
1
4

Start from A

Overview

CSS inheritance is about what happens if no value is specified for a property on an element. If no value is specified for a property, the value can either be inherited from the parent element, or be set to its initial (default) value. For CSS inheritance, properties are categorized in two types:

Formula

inherited properties non - inherited properties

Inherited Properties

Inherited properties are, by default, set to the computed value of the parent element. Properties related to text, such as color, font-family, font-size, line-height, and text-align, are typically inherited. This ensures consistent text styling throughout a document.

Formula

In the following example, the text inside the < strong > element will appear in 20px and in blue, since the
< strong > element inherits the color and the font - size value from the parent (< p >) element.

Example

Formula

The color and font - size properties are inherited:

<style>

p {
color: blue;
font-size: 20px;
}

</style> <body>

Formula

< p > This is a paragraph with some < strong > important </strong > text.</p >

</body>

Non-inherited Properties

If there is not set a value for a non-inherited property, the value is set to the initial (default) value of that property. Properties related to the box model or layout, like border, background, margin, padding, width, and height, are typically not inherited. In the following example, the <strong> element, inside the <p> element, will not have an additional border (since the initial value of border-style is none).

Example

The border property is not inherited: <style>

p {
border: 1px solid red;
}

</style> <body>

Formula

< p > This is a paragraph with some < strong > important </strong > text.</p >

</body>

The inherit Keyword

Formula

The inherit keyword is used to explicitly specify inheritance. It works on both inherited and non - inherited properties.

In the following example, the <strong> element, inside the <p> element, will have an additional border, since we have used the inherit keyword to explicitly specify that the border value should be inherit.

Example

Explicitly set the inheritance with the inherit keyword: <style>

p {
border: 1px solid red;
}
strong {
border: inherit;
}

</style> <body>

Formula

< p > This is a paragraph with some < strong > strong </strong > text.</p >

</body>

Previous

CSS Relative Units

Next

CSS Specificity