How do I prevent the padding property from changing width or height in CSS?

Question

I am creating a site with DIVs. Everything's working out except when I create a DIV. I create them like this (example):

newdiv {
    width: 200px;
    height: 60px;
    padding-left: 20px;
    text-align: left;
}

When I add the padding-left property, the width of the DIV changes to 220px, and I want it to remain at 200px.

Let's say I create another DIV named anotherdiv exactly the same as newdiv, and put it inside of newdiv but newdiv has no padding and anotherdiv has padding-left: 20px. I get the same thing, newdiv's width will be 220px.

How can I fix this problem?

Answer 1

Add property:

-webkit-box-sizing: border-box; /* Safari/Chrome, other WebKit */
-moz-box-sizing: border-box;    /* Firefox, other Gecko */
box-sizing: border-box;         /* Opera/IE 8+ */

Note: This won't work in Internet Explorer below version 8.

Answer 2

Put a div in your newdiv with width: auto and margin-left: 20px

Remove the padding from newdiv.

The W3 Box model page has good info.

Answer 3

Try this

box-sizing: border-box;

Answer 4

If you would like to indent text within a div without changing the size of the div use the CSS text-indent instead of padding-left.

.indent {
  text-indent: 1em;
}
.border {
  border-style: solid;
}

<div class="border">
  Non indented
</div>

<br>

<div class="border indent">
  Indented
</div>

Answer 5

simply add box-sizing: border-box;

Answer 6

when I add the padding-left property, the width of the DIV changes to 220px

Yes, that is exactly according to the standards. That's how it's supposed to work.

Let's say I create another DIV named anotherdiv exactly the same as newdiv, and put it inside of newdiv but newdiv has no padding and anotherdiv has padding-left: 20px. I get the same thing, newdiv's width will be 220px;

No, newdiv will remain 200px wide.

Answer 7

just change your div width to 160px if you have a padding of 20px it adds 40px extra to the width of your div so you need to subtract 40px from the width in order to keep your div looking normal and not distorted with extra width on it and your text all messed up.