padding-block

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-block CSS shorthand property defines the logical block 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-block: 10px 20px;
writing-mode: horizontal-tb;

padding-block: 20px 40px;
writing-mode: vertical-rl;

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

padding-block: 2em 4em;
writing-mode: vertical-lr;

<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

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

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

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

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

Values

The padding-block property takes the same values as the padding-left property.

Description

The padding values specified by padding-block 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 value	as each of the properties of the shorthand: `padding-block-start`: `0` `padding-block-end`: `0`
Applies to	all elements, except `table-row-group`, `table-header-group`, `table-footer-group`, `table-row`, `table-column-group` and `table-column`
Inherited	no
Percentages	logical-width of containing block
Computed value	as each of the properties of the shorthand: `padding-block-start`: as `<length>` `padding-block-end`: as `<length>`
Animation type	a length

Formal syntax

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

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

<length-percentage> = 
  <length>      |
  <percentage>

Examples

Setting block padding for vertical text

HTML

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

CSS

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

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

Result

Specifications

Specification
CSS Logical Properties and Values Level 1 # propdef-padding-block

Browser compatibility

	Desktop					Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Opera	Safari	Chrome Android	Firefox for Android	Opera Android	Safari on IOS	Samsung Internet	WebView Android
`padding-block`	87	87	66	73	14.1	87	66	62	14.5	14.0	87