CSS Margin Collapse

When Margins in CSS Collapse, and When They Don't

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TLDR

  • Do collapse:
    1. Vertical stacking
    2. Flow layout
    3. Elements adjacent in the DOM
    4. Nested elements
    5. Positive values or negative values
  • Don't collapse:
    1. Horizontal stacking
    2. Flex, Grid, and Positioned layout
    3. Elements not adjacent in the DOM
    4. Nested elements inside a parent with padding or border
    5. Positive values and negative values

General Rule

Margins in CSS overlap when placed next to each other. For example, a 12px margin next to a 12px margin will add up to 12px of space (12px + 12px = 12px), while a 12px margin and a 6px margin will add up to 12px as well (12px + 6px = 12px). This is because the largest margin is used.

Exceptions

There are notable exceptions to the rule, where margins don't collapse, but rather add up (instead of 12px + 12px = 12px, we get 12px + 12px = 24px)

  1. Vertical margins collapse, Horizontal margins don’t.
  2. Margins only collapse in flow layout1. This means they do not collapse in flex or grid layouts.
  3. Margins only collapse if the elements are next to each other. Elements such as a line break (<br>) will cause the margins to be counted separately.
  4. Nested elements will collapse by default, but don't when the containing element has padding, a border, or an explicit height larger than its contents.
  5. Positive values collapse, negative values collapse, but positive and negative values together do not collapse – they are added together.

Footnotes

  1. Flow Layout: when display is either inline, block, or inline-block.

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