What is Padding in CSS?

Padding is the space between the content of an element and its border.

Think of an element like a box:

Example:

div {
  padding: 20px;
  background-color: lightblue;
}

CSS Padding

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

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).

Padding - Individual Sides

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:

• 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

Note: Negative values are not allowed.

Example

Set different padding for all four sides of a <div> element:

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

Padding - Shorthand Property

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

The padding property is a shorthand for the following individual padding properties:

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

So, here is how it works:

If the padding property has four values:

padding: 25px 50px 75px 100px;

Padding with Three Values

If the padding property has three values:

padding: 25px 50px 75px;