border-block

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since September 2021.

The border-block CSS property is a shorthand property for setting the individual logical block border property values in a single place in the style sheet.

Try it

border-block can be used to set the values for one or more of border-block-width, border-block-style, and border-block-color setting both the start and end in the block dimension at once. The physical borders to which it maps depends on the element's writing mode, directionality, and text orientation. It corresponds to the border-top and border-bottom or border-right, and border-left properties depending on the values defined for writing-mode, direction, and text-orientation.

The borders in the other dimension can be set with border-inline, which sets border-inline-start, and border-inline-end.

Constituent properties

This property is a shorthand for the following CSS properties:

Syntax

css
border-block: 1px;
border-block: 2px dotted;
border-block: medium dashed blue;

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

Values

The border-block is specified with one or more of the following, in any order:

<'border-width'>

The width of the border. See border-width.

<'border-style'>

The line style of the border. See border-style.

<color>

The color of the border.

Formal definition

Initial valueas each of the properties of the shorthand:
Applies toall elements
Inheritedno
Computed valueas each of the properties of the shorthand:
Animation typeas each of the properties of the shorthand:

Formal syntax

border-block = 
  <'border-block-start'>  

<border-block-start> = 
  <line-width>  ||
  <line-style>  ||
  <color>       

<line-width> = 
  <length [0,∞]>  |
  thin            |
  medium          |
  thick           

<line-style> = 
  none    |
  hidden  |
  dotted  |
  dashed  |
  solid   |
  double  |
  groove  |
  ridge   |
  inset   |
  outset

Examples

Border with vertical text

HTML

html
<div>
  <p class="exampleText">Example text</p>
</div>

CSS

css
div {
  background-color: yellow;
  width: 120px;
  height: 120px;
}

.exampleText {
  writing-mode: vertical-rl;
  border-block: 5px dashed blue;
}

Results

Specifications

Specification
CSS Logical Properties and Values Level 1
# propdef-border-block

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also