bugl
bugl
HomeLearnPatternsSearch
HomeLearnPatternsSearch

Loading lesson path

Learn/CSS/CSS Foundations
CSS•CSS Foundations

CSS Padding and box-sizing

Padding and Element Width

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 ( the box model ). 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

Formula

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;
}

Padding and box-sizing

The box-sizing property defines how the width and height of an element are calculated: should they include padding and borders, or not.

Formula

The box - sizing property can have the following values:
content - box
  • This is default. The width and height properties includes only the content (border and padding are not included)

Formula

border - box
  • The width and height properties includes content, padding and border So, to keep the width at 300px, no matter the amount of padding, you can use the box-sizing: border-box;. This causes the element to maintain its actual width; if you increase the padding, the available content space will decrease.

Example

Formula

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;
}

All CSS Padding Properties

Property

Description padding

Formula

A shorthand property for setting all the padding properties in one declaration padding - bottom
Sets the bottom padding of an element padding - left
Sets the left padding of an element padding - right
Sets the right padding of an element padding - top

Sets the top padding of an element

Previous

CSS Padding

Next

CSS Height and Width