padding-inline CSS property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since April 2021.

The padding-inline CSS shorthand property defines the logical inline start and end padding of an element, which maps to physical padding properties depending on the element's writing mode, directionality, and text orientation.

Try it

padding-inline: 5% 10%;
writing-mode: horizontal-tb;

padding-inline: 15px 40px;
writing-mode: vertical-rl;

padding-inline: 5% 20%;
writing-mode: horizontal-tb;
direction: rtl;

<section id="default-example">
  <div class="transition-all" id="example-element">
    <div class="box">
      Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
      western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
    </div>
  </div>
</section>

#example-element {
  border: 10px solid #ffc129;
  overflow: hidden;
  text-align: left;
}

.box {
  border: dashed 1px;
  unicode-bidi: bidi-override;
}

Constituent properties

This property is a shorthand for the following CSS properties:

Syntax

css
/* <length> values */
padding-inline: 10px 20px; /* An absolute length */
padding-inline: 1em 2em; /* relative to the text size */
padding-inline: 10px; /* sets both start and end values */

/* <percentage> values */
padding-inline: 5% 2%; /* relative to the nearest block container's width */

/* Global values */
padding-inline: inherit;
padding-inline: initial;
padding-inline: revert;
padding-inline: revert-layer;
padding-inline: unset;

The padding-inline property may be specified with one or two values. If one value is given, it is used as the value for both padding-inline-start and padding-inline-end. If two values are given, the first is used for padding-inline-start and the second for padding-inline-end.

Values

The size of the padding as a fixed value. Must be nonnegative.

The size of the padding as a percentage, relative to the inline size (width in a horizontal language, defined by writing-mode) of the containing block. Must be nonnegative.

Description

The padding values specified by padding-inline can be equivalent to the padding-top and padding-bottom properties or the padding-right and padding-left properties, depending on the values defined for writing-mode, direction, and text-orientation.

Formal definition

Initial valueApplies toInheritedPercentagesComputed value Animation type

as each of the properties of the shorthand:

padding-inline-start: 0
padding-inline-end: 0

all elements, except table-row-group, table-header-group, table-footer-group, table-row, table-column-group and table-column

logical-width of containing block

as each of the properties of the shorthand:

padding-inline-start: as <length>
padding-inline-end: as <length>

a length

Formal syntax

padding-inline =
<'padding-top'>{1,2}

<padding-top> =
<length-percentage [0,∞]>

<length-percentage> =
<length> |
<percentage>
This syntax reflects the latest standard as per CSS Box Model Module Level 4, CSS Logical Properties and Values Module Level 1, CSS Values and Units Module Level 4. Not all browsers may have implemented every part. See Browser compatibility for support information.

Examples

Setting inline padding for vertical text

HTML

html
<div>
  <p class="exampleText">Example text</p>
</div>

CSS

css
div {
  background-color: yellow;
  width: 120px;
  height: 120px;
}

.exampleText {
  writing-mode: vertical-rl;
  padding-inline: 20px 40px;
  background-color: #c8c800;
}