Padding CSS

Padding is used to create space around an element’s content, inside of any defined borders.

Individual Sides

• padding-top
• padding-right
• padding-bottom
• padding-left

All the padding properties can have the following values:

• 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

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

Shorthand Property

If the padding property has four values:

• padding: 25px 50px 75px 100px;

  • top padding is 25px
  • right padding is 50px
  • bottom padding is 75px
  • left padding is 100px

• padding: 25px 50px 75px;

  • top padding is 25px
  • right and left paddings are 50px
  • bottom padding is 75px

• padding: 25px 50px;

  • top and bottom paddings are 25px
  • right and left paddings are 50px

• padding: 25px;

  • all four paddings are 25px

pading: 25px 50px 75px 100px;
padding: 25px 50px 75px;
padding: 25px 50px;
padding: 25px;

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 Box Model CSS

So, if an element has a specified width, the padding added to that element will be added to the total width of the element.

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 actual width; if you increase the padding, the available content space will decrease.

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