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HTML How to Make a Website CSS: Cascading Style Sheets Center the Wrapper

Posted by nfs
nfs
35,526 Points

What does padding really do?

I want to get a clear conception of this padding property. Thanks in advance.

1 Answer

Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,469 Points

Padding is the space inside an element, and margin is the space around an element. The border is right between.

Look here:

        margin
--------------------
|      padding     |
|                  |
|      content     |
|                  |
|      padding     | <- Border
--------------------
        margin


           margin
----------------------------
|         padding          |
|                          |
| content of other element |
|                          |
|         padding          | <- Border
----------------------------
           margin

Look at this post for more information.

Also, check out the CSS box model at w3schools.

Finally, I must mention that doodling around with stuff will help you understand how the thing you're using works.

Here's an experiment: try making an h1 element in the HTML and setting it's background color to something different from the background color that the H1 is on. Then, try adding padding. You should see the output pretty clearly. Try different amounts of padding and seeing its output! :smile: