CSS padding
The CSS padding
property is CSS shorthand for specifying padding on all sides of an element.
In other words, the padding
property is shorthand property for setting padding-top
, padding-right
, padding-bottom
, and padding-left
all at once.
Syntax
These values are explained below.
Possible Values
- length
- Allows you to specify a non-negative length value as the padding thickness. Negative values are invalid.
- percentage
- Allows you to specify a non-negative percentage value as the padding thickness. Negative values are invalid.
You can include these values between one to four times. If you supply only one value, it applies to all sides. If you provide two values, the top and bottom paddings are set to the first value and the right and left paddings are set to the second. If there are three values, the top is set to the first value, the left and right are set to the second, and the bottom is set to the third. If there are four values, they apply to the top, right, bottom, and left, respectively.
In addition, all CSS properties also accept the following CSS-wide keyword values as the sole component of their property value:
initial
- Represents the value specified as the property's initial value.
inherit
- Represents the computed value of the property on the element's parent.
unset
- This value acts as either
inherit
orinitial
, depending on whether the property is inherited or not. In other words, it sets all properties to their parent value if they are inheritable or to their initial value if not inheritable.
General Information
- Initial Value
Depends on the value of each individual padding property (i.e.
padding-top
,padding-right
,padding-bottom
, andpadding-left
).The initial value for these properties is
0
.- Applies To
-
CSS3 states that this property applies to all elements. However, CSS2 states
all elements except table-row-group, table-header-group, table-footer-group, table-row, table-column-group and table-column
. - Inherited?
- No
- Media
- Visual
- Animatable
- Yes (see example)
Example Code
Official Specifications
- CSS basic box model (W3C Working Draft 9 August 2007)
- CSS basic box model (Editor's Draft)
- CSS Level 2.1 (W3C Recommendation 07 June 2011)
- CSS Level 1 (W3C Recommendation 17 Dec 1996)