padding-inline-start

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨January 2020⁩.

Thepadding-inline-startCSS property defines the logical inline start padding of an element, which maps to a physical padding depending on the element's writing mode, directionality, and text orientation.

Try it

padding-inline-start: 20px;writing-mode: horizontal-tb;

padding-inline-start: 20px;writing-mode: vertical-rl;

padding-inline-start: 5em;writing-mode: horizontal-tb;direction: rtl;

<section>  <div>    <div>      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;}

Syntax

css

/* <length> values */padding-inline-start: 10px; /* An absolute length */padding-inline-start: 1em; /* A length relative to the text size *//* <percentage> value */padding-inline-start: 5%; /* A padding relative to the block container's width *//* Global values */padding-inline-start: inherit;padding-inline-start: initial;padding-inline-start: revert;padding-inline-start: revert-layer;padding-inline-start: unset;

Values

<length>: The size of the padding as a fixed value. Must be nonnegative.
<percentage>: The size of the padding as a percentage, relative to the inline size (width in a horizontal language, defined bywriting-mode) of thecontaining block. Must be nonnegative.

Description

Thepadding-inline-start property takes the same values as physical properties such aspadding-top. However, it can be equivalent topadding-left,padding-right,padding-top, orpadding-bottom depending on the values set forwriting-mode,direction, andtext-orientation.

It relates topadding-block-start,padding-block-end, andpadding-inline-end, which define the other padding values of the element.

Formal definition

Initial value	`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`<length>`
Animation type	alength

Formal syntax

padding-inline-start =
<'padding-top'>

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

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

Examples

Setting inline start padding for vertical text

HTML

html

<div>  <p>Example text</p></div>

CSS

css

div {  background-color: yellow;  width: 120px;  height: 120px;}.exampleText {  writing-mode: vertical-lr;  padding-inline-start: 20px;  background-color: #c8c800;}

Result

Specifications

Specification
CSS Logical Properties and Values Level 1 # padding-properties

Browser compatibility

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This page was last modified on⁨Oct 30, 2025⁩ byMDN contributors.

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