order

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since September 2015.

The order CSS property sets the order to lay out an item in a flex or grid container. Items in a container are sorted by ascending order value and then by their source code order. Items not given an explicit order value are assigned the default value of 0.

Try it

In the above demo, select the options on the left-hand side to change the value of the pink box's order property. The light blue boxes have been given fixed order values.

Bear in mind the effect of source order. For example, when order: 2; is selected, the pink box is placed before the two blue boxes with order: 2;. This is because the pink box appears before the blue boxes in the source code.

Syntax

css
/* <integer> values */
order: 5;
order: -5;

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

Since order is only meant to affect the visual order of elements and not their logical or tab order. order must not be used on non-visual media such as speech.

Defined in the CSS display module, this property impacts only grid and flex items. When order is set on an element whose parent's display property is not creating a flex or grid container, the order property has no effect.

Values

<integer>

Represents the ordinal group to be used by the item.

Accessibility

Using the order property will create a disconnect between the visual presentation of content and DOM order. This will adversely affect low vision users navigating with the aid of assistive technology such as a screen reader. If the visual order differs from the DOM order, your users will have different experiences depending on how they access your content.

Formal definition

Initial value0
Applies toFlex items, grid items, and absolutely-positioned flex and grid container children
Inheritedno
Computed valueas specified
Animation typean integer

Formal syntax

order = 
<integer>

Examples

Ordering items in a flex container

In this example, we create a classic two-sidebar layout.

HTML

We include a header, a footer, and a main content area. The main content includes an article and two side bars. Note their order! We'll use the CSS order property to change their visual order.

html
<header>Header</header>
<main>
  <article>Article</article>
  <nav>Nav</nav>
  <aside>Aside</aside>
</main>
<footer>Footer</footer>

CSS

We style the main area using flexible box layout module features; by setting display to flex, the <main> element becomes a flex container. By default, this creates flex items of equal vertical size. The sidebars are both given an absolute width, while the <article> will consume all the positive free space with a flex-grow factor set via the flex shorthand.

We then set different order property values on each of the flex container's three children; this means the CSS is defining that component's visual order rather than it appearing in the order declared in the HTML.

css
main {
  display: flex;
  text-align: center;
}
main > article {
  flex: 1;
  order: 2;
}
main > nav {
  width: 200px;
  order: 1;
}
main > aside {
  width: 200px;
  order: 3;
}

Result

The <article> appears first in the source order but visually rendered in the center.

Specifications

Specification
CSS Display Module Level 3
# order-property

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also