padding-block-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.

The padding-block-start CSS property defines the logical block 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-block-start: 20px;
writing-mode: horizontal-tb;

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

padding-block-start: 5em;
writing-mode: horizontal-tb;

padding-block-start: 5em;
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;
}

Syntax

css

/* <length> values */
padding-block-start: 10px; /* An absolute length */
padding-block-start: 1em; /* A length relative to the text size */

/* <percentage> value */
padding-block-start: 5%; /* A padding relative to the block container's width */

/* Global values */
padding-block-start: inherit;
padding-block-start: initial;
padding-block-start: revert;
padding-block-start: revert-layer;
padding-block-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) of the containing block. Must be nonnegative.

Description

The padding-block-start property takes the same values as physical padding properties such as padding-top. However, it can be equivalent to padding-top, padding-bottom, padding-left, or padding-right depending on the values set for writing-mode, direction, and text-orientation.

It relates to padding-block-end, padding-inline-start, and padding-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	a length

Formal syntax

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

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

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

Examples

Setting block start 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-lr;
  padding-block-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 on ⁨Oct 30, 2025⁩ by MDN contributors.

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