Web/CSS/inherit

The inherit CSS keyword causes the element for which it is specified to take the computed value of the property from its parent element. It can be applied to any CSS property, including the CSS shorthand all.

For inherited properties, this reinforces the default behavior, and is only needed to override another rule. For non-inherited properties, this specifies a behavior that typically makes relatively little sense and you may consider using initial instead, or unset on the all property.

Inheritance is always from the parent element in the document tree, even when the parent element is not the containing block.

Examples

Exclude selected elements from a rule

/* Make second-level headers green */
h2 { color: green; }

/* ...but leave those in the sidebar alone so they use their parent's color */
#sidebar h2 { color: inherit; }

In this example the h2 elements inside the sidebar might be different colors. For example, if one of them were the child of a div matched by the rule ...

div#current { color: blue; }

... it would be blue.

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
CSS Cascading and Inheritance Level 4The definition of 'inherit' in that specification.	Candidate Recommendation	No changes from Level 3.
CSS Values and Units Module Level 3The definition of 'inherit' in that specification.	Candidate Recommendation	No significant change from CSS Level 2 (Revision 1).
CSS Level 2 (Revision 1)The definition of 'inherit' in that specification.	Recommendation	Initial definition.

Browser compatibility

The compatibility table on this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.

Update compatibility data on GitHub

	Desktop						Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari	Android webview	Chrome for Android	Firefox for Android	Opera for Android	Safari on iOS	Samsung Internet
inherit	Chrome Full support 1	Edge Full support 12	Firefox Full support 1	IE Full support 8	Opera Full support 4	Safari Full support 1	WebView Android Full support 1	Chrome Android Full support 18	Firefox Android Full support 4	Opera Android Full support 14	Safari iOS Full support 1	Samsung Internet Android Full support 1.0

Legend

Full support  

Full support

See also

• Inheritance
• Use initial to set a property to its initial value.
• Use unset to set a property to its inherited value if it inherits, or to its initial value if not.
• Use revert to reset a property to the value established by the user-agent stylesheet (or by user styles, if any exist).
• The all property lets you reset all properties to their initial, inherited, reverted, or unset state at once.

inherit by Mozilla Contributors is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.5.