Vertically center a div inside another div

Question

I'm trying to vertical-align: middle a div inside another div, but for some reason it's not working properly. What am I doing wrong?

#wrapper {
border: 1px solid red;
width: 500px;
height: 500px;
}
#block {
border: 1px solid blue;
width: 500px;
height: 250px;
vertical-align: middle;
}

<div id = 'wrapper'> 
<div id = 'block'> I'm Block </div>
<div>

PS: This is just an example, so no, I don't actually know the actual width and height of the divs, as they are dynamic, according to their contents, so please no margin-top: 125px, or padding-top: 125px answers, or answers like that.

score 28 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

The vertical-align property applies only to inline-level and table-cell elements (source). In your code you're working with block-level elements.

Try this flexbox alternative:

#wrapper {
    border: 1px solid red;
    width: 500px;
    height: 500px;
    display: flex;               /* establish flex container */
    align-items: center;         /* vertically center flex items */
}

#block {
    border: 1px solid blue;
    width: 500px;
    height: 250px;
    /* vertical-align: middle; */
}

<div id='wrapper'>
    <div id='block'> I'm Block </div>
<div>

Learn more about flex alignment here: Methods for Aligning Flex Items

Browser support: Flexbox is supported by all major browsers, except IE < 10. Some recent browser versions, such as Safari 8 and IE10, require vendor prefixes. For a quick way to add prefixes use Autoprefixer. More details in this answer.

score 6 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 16:24

6

Here is how I normally do this.

#wrapper {
border: 1px solid red;
width: 500px;
height: 500px;
position: relative;
}
#block {
border: 1px solid blue;
width: 500px;
height: 250px;
position: absolute;
top: 50%;
transform: translateY(-50%);
}

<div id="wrapper">
<div id="block"></div>
</div>

Easy way to make it dynamic.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 16:24

animuson

53,861
28
137
147

answered Feb 14 '16 at 04:56

mattdevio

2,319
1
14
28

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 14 '16 at 05:00

You can do it this way:

#wrapper {
  border: 1px solid red;
  width: 500px;
  height: 500px;
}
#block {
  border: 1px solid blue;
  width: 500px;
  height: 250px;
  position: relative;
  top: 50%;
  transform: translateY(-50%);
}

Here a live view: https://jsfiddle.net/w9bpy1t4/

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 09 '20 at 18:54

You can do this:

#block {
  border:         1px solid blue;
  margin:         25% 0;
  width:          500px;
  height:         250px;
  vertical-align: middle;
}

But that's not what you looking for!

or like this:

#wrapper {
  border:         1px solid red;
  width:          500px;
  height:         500px;
  display:        table-cell;
  vertical-align: middle;
}

#block {
  border:  1px solid blue;
  display: inline-block;
  width:   500px;
  height:  250px;
}

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 14 '16 at 05:07

if u know the height of the inner div then u can use position relative on wrapper and position absolute in inner div with some margin. So css can be this

#wrapper {
 border: 1px solid red;
 width: 500px;
 height: 500px;
 position: relative;
 }
#block {
 border: 1px solid blue;
 width: 500px;
 height: 250px;
 vertical-align: middle;
 position: absolute;
 margin-top: 50%;
 top: -125px;
 }

Vertically center a div inside another div

5 Answers5

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