How do I vertically center text with CSS?

htmlcssvertical-alignment
How do I vertically center text with CSS? How do I vertically center text with CSS? - Solution Checker - solutionschecker.com - Find the solution for any programming question. We as a solution checker will focus on finding the fastest possible solution for developers. Main topics like coding, learning.

I have a <div> element which contains text and I want to align the contents of this <div> vertically center.

Here is my <div> style:

#box {
  height: 170px;
  width: 270px;
  background: #000;
  font-size: 48px;
  color: #FFF;
  text-align: center;
}
<div id="box">
  Lorem ipsum dolor sit
</div>
Expand snippet

What is the best way to achieve this goal?

Solution 1

You can try this basic approach:

div {
  height: 100px;
  line-height: 100px;
  text-align: center;
  border: 2px dashed #f69c55;
}
<div>
  Hello World!
</div>
Expand snippet

It only works for a single line of text though, because we set the line's height to the same height as the containing box element.

A more versatile approach

This is another way to align text vertically. This solution will work for a single line and multiple lines of text, but it still requires a fixed height container:

div {
  height: 100px;
  line-height: 100px;
  text-align: center;
  border: 2px dashed #f69c55;
}
span {
  display: inline-block;
  vertical-align: middle;
  line-height: normal;
}
<div>
  <span>Hello World!</span>
</div>
Expand snippet

The CSS just sizes the <div>, vertically center aligns the <span> by setting the <div>'s line-height equal to its height, and makes the <span> an inline-block with vertical-align: middle. Then it sets the line-height back to normal for the <span>, so its contents will flow naturally inside the block.

Simulating table display

And here is another option, which may not work on older browsers that don't support display: table and display: table-cell (basically just Internet Explorer 7). Using CSS we simulate table behavior (since tables support vertical alignment), and the HTML is the same as the second example:

div {
  display: table;
  height: 100px;
  width: 100%;
  text-align: center;
  border: 2px dashed #f69c55;
}
span {
  display: table-cell;
  vertical-align: middle;
}
<div>
  <span>Hello World!</span>
</div>
Expand snippet

Using absolute positioning

This technique uses an absolutely positioned element setting top, bottom, left and right to 0. It is described in more detail in an article in Smashing Magazine, Absolute Horizontal And Vertical Centering In CSS.

div {
  display: flex;
  justify-content: center;
  align-items: center;
  height: 100px;
  width: 100%;
  border: 2px dashed #f69c55;
}
<div>
  <span>Hello World!</span>
</div>
Expand snippet

Solution 2

Another way (not mentioned here yet) is with Flexbox.

Just add the following code to the container element:

display: flex;
justify-content: center; /* align horizontal */
align-items: center; /* align vertical */

Flexbox demo 1

Show code snippet

Alternatively, instead of aligning the content via the container, flexbox can also center a flex item with an auto margin when there is only one flex-item in the flex container (like the example given in the question above).

So to center the flex item both horizontally and vertically just set it with margin:auto

Flexbox Demo 2

Show code snippet

NB: All the above applies to centering items while laying them out in horizontal rows. This is also the default behavior, because by default the value for flex-direction is row. If, however flex-items need to be laid out in vertical columns, then flex-direction: column should be set on the container to set the main-axis as column and additionally the justify-content and align-items properties now work the other way around with justify-content: center centering vertically and align-items: center centering horizontally)

flex-direction: column demo

Show code snippet

A good place to start with Flexbox to see some of its features and get syntax for maximum browser support is flexyboxes

Also, browser support nowadays is very good: caniuse

For cross-browser compatibility for display: flex and align-items, you can use the following:

display: -webkit-box;
display: -webkit-flex;
display: -moz-box;
display: -ms-flexbox;
display: flex;
-webkit-flex-align: center;
-ms-flex-align: center;
-webkit-align-items: center;
align-items: center;

Solution 3

You can easily do this by adding the following piece of CSS code:

display: table-cell;
vertical-align: middle;

That means your CSS finally looks like:

#box {
  height: 90px;
  width: 270px;
  background: #000;
  font-size: 48px;
  font-style: oblique;
  color: #FFF;
  text-align: center;
  margin-top: 20px;
  margin-left: 5px;
  display: table-cell;
  vertical-align: middle;
}
<div id="box">
  Some text
</div>
Expand snippet

Solution 4

For reference and to add a simpler answer:

Pure CSS:

.vertical-align {
    position: relative;
    top: 50%;
    -webkit-transform: translateY(-50%);
    -ms-transform: translateY(-50%);
    transform: translateY(-50%);
}

Or as a SASS/SCSS Mixin:

@mixin vertical-align {
    position: relative;
    top: 50%;
    -webkit-transform: translateY(-50%);
    -ms-transform: translateY(-50%);
    transform: translateY(-50%);
}

Use by:

.class-to-center {
    @include vertical-align;
}

By Sebastian Ekström's blog post Vertical align anything with just 3 lines of CSS:

This method can cause elements to be blurry due to the element being placed on a half pixel. A solution for this is to set its parent element to preserve-3d. Like following:

.parent-element {
    -webkit-transform-style: preserve-3d;
    -moz-transform-style: preserve-3d;
    transform-style: preserve-3d;
}

We live in 2015+ and Flex Box is supported by every major modern browser.

It will be the way websites are made from here on out.

Learn it!

Solution 5

All credit goes to this link owner @Sebastian Ekström Link; please go through this. See it in action codepen. By reading the above article I also created a demo fiddle.

With just three lines of CSS (excluding vendor prefixes) we can do it with the help of a transform: translateY vertically centers whatever we want, even if we dont know its height.

The CSS property transform is usually used for rotating and scaling elements, but with its translateY function we can now vertically align elements. Usually this must be done with absolute positioning or setting line-heights, but these require you to either know the height of the element or only works on single-line text, etc.

So, to do this we write:

.element {
    position: relative;
    top: 50%;
    transform: translateY(-50%);
}

Thats all you need. It is a similar technique to the absolute-position method, but with the upside that we dont have to set any height on the element or position-property on the parent. It works straight out of the box, even in Internet Explorer 9!

To make it even more simple, we can write it as a mixin with its vendor prefixes.

Solution 6

There is a tiny magic with CSS3 flexboxes:

/* Important */
section {
    display: flex;
    display: -webkit-flex;
}
section p {
    /* Key Part */
    margin: auto;
}


/* Unimportant, coloring and UI */
section {
    height: 200px;
    width: 60%;
    margin: auto;
    border-radius: 20px;
    border: 3px solid orange;
    background-color: gold;
}
section p {
    text-align: center;
    font-family: Cantarell, Calibri;
    font-size: 15px;
    background-color: yellow;
    border-radius: 20px;
    padding: 15px;
}
<section>
    <p>
        I'm a centered box!<br/>
        Flexboxes are great!
    </p>
</section>
Expand snippet

Tip: Replace the line above marked as "Key Part" with one of these lines, if you want to center the text:

  1. Only vertically:

    margin: auto 0;

  2. Only horizontally:

    margin: 0 auto;

As I noticed, this trick works with grids (i.e. display: grid), also.

Solution 7

Here is another option using flexbox.

#container {
  display: flex;
  height: 200px;
  background: orange;
}

.child {
  margin: auto;
}
<div id="container">
  <div class="child">
    <span>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit. Molestiae, nemo.</span>
  </div>
</div>
Expand snippet

Result

Here is a great article about centering in css. Check it out.

Solution 8

Flexible approach

div {
  width: 250px;
  min-height: 50px;
  line-height: 50px;
  text-align: center;
  border: 1px solid #123456;
  margin-bottom: 5px;
}
span {
  display: inline-block;
  vertical-align: middle;
  line-height: normal;
}
<div>
  <span>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.<br />
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.<br />
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.</span>
</div>
<div>
  <span>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.</span>
</div>
<div>
  <span>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.</span>
</div>
<div>
Expand snippet

Solution 9

I saw the previous answers, and they will work only for that width of screen (not responsive). For the responsive you have to use flex.

Example:

div { display:flex; align-items:center; }

Solution 10

The solution accepted as the answer is perfect to use line-height the same as the height of div, but this solution does not work perfectly when text is wrapped OR is in two lines.

Try this one if text is wrapped or is on multiple lines inside a div.

#box
{
  display: table-cell;
  vertical-align: middle;
}

For more reference, see:

Solution 11

You can use the following code snippet as the reference. It is working like a charm for me:

html,
body {
  height: 100%;
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  width: 100%;
}

body {
  display: table;
}

.centered-text {
  text-align: center;
  display: table-cell;
  vertical-align: middle;
}
<div class="centered-text">
  <h1>Yes, it's my landing page</h1>
  <h2>Under construction, coming soon!!!</h2>
</div>
Expand snippet

The output of the above code snippet is as follow:

Solution 12

Try this solution:

.EXTENDER {
    position: absolute;
    top: 0px;
    left: 0px;
    bottom: 0px;
    right: 0px;
    width: 100%;
    height: 100%;
    overflow-y: hidden;
    overflow-x: hidden;
}

.PADDER-CENTER {
    width: 100%;
    height: 100%;
    display: -webkit-box;
    display: -moz-box;
    display: -ms-flexbox;
    display: -webkit-flex;
    display: flex;
    -webkit-box-pack: center;
    -moz-box-pack: center;
    -ms-flex-pack: center;
    -webkit-justify-content: center;
    justify-content: center;
    -webkit-box-align: center;
    -moz-box-align: center;
    -ms-flex-align: center;
    -webkit-align-items: center;
    align-items: center;
}
<div class="EXTENDER">
  <div class="PADDER-CENTER">
    <div contentEditable="true">Edit this text...</div>
  </div>
</div>
Expand snippet

Built using CSS+.

Solution 13

You can also use below properties.

display: flex; 
align-content: center; 
justify-content : center;

Solution 14

Another way:

Don't set the height attribute of the div, but instead use padding: to achieve the effect. Similarly to line-height, it only works if you have one line of text. Although this way, if you have more content, the text will still be centered, but the div itself will be slightly larger.

So instead of going with:

div {
  height: 120px;
  line-height: 120px;
}

You can say:

div {
   padding: 60px 0; // Maybe 60 minus font-size divided by two, if you want to be exact
}

This will set the top and bottom padding of the div to 60px, and the left and right padding to zero, making the div 120 pixels (plus the height of your font) high, and placing the text vertically centered in the div.

Solution 15

I'm not sure anyone has gone the writing-mode route, but I think it solves the problem cleanly and has broad support:

.vertical {
  //border: 1px solid green;
  writing-mode: vertical-lr;
  text-align: center;
  height: 100%;
  width: 100%;
}
.horizontal {
  //border: 1px solid blue;
  display: inline-block;
  writing-mode: horizontal-tb;
  width: 100%;
  text-align: center;
}
.content {
  text-align: left;
  display: inline-block;
  border: 1px solid #e0e0e0;
  padding: .5em 1em;
  border-radius: 1em;
}
<div class="vertical">
  <div class="horizontal">
    <div class="content">
      I'm centered in the vertical and horizontal thing
    </div>
  </div>
</div>
Expand snippet

This will, of course, work with any dimensions you need (besides 100% of the parent). If you uncomment the border lines, it'll be helpful to familiarize yourself.

JSFiddle demo for you to fiddle.

Caniuse support: 85.22% + 6.26% = 91.48% (even Internet Explorer is in!)

Solution 16

For all your vertical alignment needs!

Declare this Mixin:

@mixin vertical-align($position: relative) {
  position: $position;
  top: 50%;
  -webkit-transform: translateY(-50%);
  -ms-transform: translateY(-50%);
  transform: translateY(-50%);
}

Then include it in your element:

.element{
    @include vertical-align();
}

Solution 17

Even better idea for this. You can do like this too 

body,
html {
  height: 100%;
}

.parent {
  white-space: nowrap;
  height: 100%;
  text-align: center;
}

.parent:after {
  display: inline-block;
  vertical-align: middle;
  height: 100%;
  content: '';
}

.centered {
  display: inline-block;
  vertical-align: middle;
  white-space: normal;
}
<div class="parent">
  <div class="centered">
    <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.</p>
  </div>
</div>
Expand snippet

Solution 18

For a single line of text (or a single character) you can use this technique:

It can be used when #box has a non-fixed, relative height in %.

<div id="box"></div>

#box::before {
    display: block;
    content: "";
    height: 50%;
}

#box::after {
    vertical-align: top;
    line-height: 0;
    content: "TextContent";
}

See a live demo at JsBin (easier to edit CSS) or JsFiddle (easier to change height of result frame).

If you want to place inner text in HTML, not in CSS, then you need to wrap text content in additional inline element and edit #box::after to match it. (And, of course, content: property should be removed.)

For example, <div id="box"><span>TextContent</span></div>. In this case, #box::after should be replaced with #box span.

For Internet Explorer 8 support you must replace :: with :.

Solution 19

Try the transform property:

 #box {
  height: 90px;
  width: 270px;
  position: absolute;
  top: 50%;
  left: 50%;
  transform: translate(-50%, -50%);
}
 <div Id="box">
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
</div>
Expand snippet

Solution 20

A very simple & most powerful solution to vertically align center:

.outer-div {
  height: 200px;
  width: 200px;
  text-align: center;
  border: 1px solid #000;
}

.inner {
  position: relative;
  top: 50%;
  transform: translateY(-50%);
  color: red;
}
<div class="outer-div">
  <span class="inner">No data available</span>
</div>
Expand snippet

Solution 21

The following code will put the div in the middle of the screen regardless of screen size or div size:

.center-screen {
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  justify-content: center;
  align-items: center;
  text-align: center;
  min-height: 100vh;
}
 <html>
 <head>
 </head>
 <body>
 <div class="center-screen">
 I'm in the center
 </div>
 </body>
 </html>
Expand snippet

See more details about flex here.

Solution 22

The simple and versatile way is (as Michielvoo's table approach):

[ctrv]{
    display:table !important;
}

[ctrv] > *{ /* adressing direct discendents */
      display: table-cell;
      vertical-align: middle;
      // text-align: center; /* optional */
}

Using this attribute (or a equivalent class) on a parent tag works even for many children to align:

<parent ctrv>  <ch1/>  <ch2/>   </parent>

Solution 23

Try the following code:

display: table-cell;
vertical-align: middle;


div {
  height: 80%;
  width: 100%;
  text-align: center;
  display: table-cell;
  vertical-align: middle;
  background: #4CAF50;
  color: #fff;
  font-size: 50px;
  font-style: italic;
}
<div>
  Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s
</div>
Expand snippet

Solution 24

I would just like to extend the answer from Michielvoo in order to release need for line-height and breathing of div height. It is basically just a simplified version like this:

div {
  width: 250px;
  /* height: 100px;
  line-height: 100px; */
  text-align: center;
  border: 1px solid #123456;
  background-color: #bbbbff;
  padding: 10px;
  margin: 10px;
}

span {
  display: inline-block;
  vertical-align: middle;
  line-height: normal;
}
<div>
  <span>All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it</span>
</div>

<div>
  <span>And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.</span>
</div>
Expand snippet

NOTE: commented out part of cssis needed for fixed-height of enclosing div.

Solution 25

I needed a row of clickable elephants, vertically centered, but without using a table to get around some Internet Explorer 9 weirdness.

I eventually found the nicest CSS (for my needs) and it's great with Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer 11. Sadly Internet Explorer 9 is still laughing at me...

div {
  border: 1px dotted blue;
  display: inline;
  line-height: 100px;
  height: 100px;
}

span {
  border: 1px solid red;
  display: inline-block;
  line-height: normal;
  vertical-align: middle;
}

.out {
  border: 3px solid silver;
  display: inline-block;
}
<div class="out" onclick="alert(1)">
  <div> <span><img src="http://www.birdfolk.co.uk/littleredsolo.png"/></span> </div>
  <div> <span>A lovely clickable option.</span> </div>
</div>

<div class="out" onclick="alert(2)">
  <div> <span><img src="http://www.birdfolk.co.uk/bang2/Ship01.png"/></span> </div>
  <div> <span>Something charming to click on.</span> </div>
</div>
Expand snippet

Obviously you don't need the borders, but they can help you see how it works.

Solution 26

You can use the positioning method in CSS:

Check the result here....

HTML:

<div class="relativediv">
  <p>
    Make me vertical align as center
  </p>
</div>

CSS:

.relativediv{position:relative;border:1px solid #ddd;height:300px;width:300px}
.relativediv p{position:absolute:top:50%;transfrom:translateY(-50%);}

Hope you use this method too.

Solution 27

Wherever you want vertically center style means you can try display:table-cell and vertical-align:middle.

Example:

#box
{
  display: table-cell;
  vertical-align: middle;
  height: 90px;
  width: 270px;
  background: #000;
  font-size: 48px;
  font-style: oblique;
  color: #FFF;
  text-align: center;
  margin-top: 20px;
  margin-left: 5px;
}
<div Id="box">
  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
</div>
Expand snippet

Solution 28

Set it within button instead of div if you don't care about its little visual 3D effect.

#box
{
  height: 120px;
  width: 300px;
  background: #000;
  font-size: 48px;
  font-style: oblique;
  color: #FFF;
}
<button Id="box" disabled>
  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
</button>
Expand snippet

Solution 29

Absolute Positioning and Stretching

As with the method above this one begins by setting positioning on the parent and child elements as relative and absolute respectively. From there things differ.

In the code below Ive once again used this method to center the child both horizontally and vertically, though you can use the method for vertical centering only.

HTML

<div id="parent">
    <div id="child">Content here</div>
</div>

CSS

#parent {position: relative;}
#child {
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    bottom: 0;
    left: 0;
    right: 0;
    width: 50%;
    height: 30%;
    margin: auto;
}

The idea with this method is to try to get the child element to stretch to all four edges by setting the top, bottom, right, and left vales to 0. Because our child element is smaller than our parent elements it cant reach all four edges.

Setting auto as the margin on all four sides however causes opposite margins to be equal and displays our child div in the center of the parent div.

Unfortunately the above wont work in Internet Explorer 7 and below, and like the previous method the content inside the child div can grow too large, causing it to be hidden.

Solution 30

.element{position: relative;top: 50%;transform: translateY(-50%);}

Add this small code in the CSS property of your element. It is awesome. Try it!

More Questions

@selector() in Swift?printf anomaly after "fork()"How to send one to one message using Firebase MessagingError message "Strict standards: Only variables should be passed by reference"How to vertically align an image inside a divIs there a good Valgrind substitute for Windows?How can I parse CSV data with JavaScript?Get the row(s) which have the max value in groups using groupbyHow to get the user input in Java?How to configure XAMPP to send mail from localhost?How do I execute a program or call a system command?Get escaped URL parameterHow to iterate over a list in chunksHow to have one colorbar for all subplotsImport multiple csv files into pandas and concatenate into one DataFrameExamples of GoF Design Patterns in Java's core librariesHow do I select rows from a DataFrame based on column values?Regex Match all characters between two stringsConvert continuous numeric values to discrete categories defined by intervalsBest practices for circular shift (rotate) operations in C++