It looks like you're using Chrome. The orange indicates that it's margin (padding would be green). Using the developer console, you can inspect the element to see all the styles that are applied to it. You probably have another rule somewhere with a higher specificity that is taking precedence over your general form
rule.
If you click on the item in the Elements tab of the developer console, the styles will be listed in the right-hand panel. You will probably see your style there with a strikethrough through it, indicating that another rule is taking precedence over it. Find the other rule and take the appropriate action (either override it with a higher specificity or modify the rule that's in place).
I would avoid using !important
unless you're sure it's the right solution for this issue. By the sounds of it, it's definitely not the right solution. See here or just Google "CSS avoid important" for reasons why it's not a good idea to jump right to !important
as a solution. One big reason is because that makes it difficult to override that style if you need to later on.
See here for an explanation of CSS specificity (including !important
and some rules of thumb on when and when not to use it).