Preventing "double" borders in CSS

Css

Css Problem Overview

Say I have two divs next to each other (take https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/home as reference) with a border.

Is there a way (preferably a CSS trick) to prevent my divs from appearing like having a double border? Have a look at this image to better understand what I mean:

You can see that where the two divs meet, it appears like they have a double border.

Css Solutions

Solution 1 - Css

If we're talking about elements that cannot be guaranteed to appear in any particular order (maybe 3 elements in one row, followed by a row with 2 elements, etc.), you want something that can be placed on every element in the collection. This solution should cover that:

.collection {
	/* these styles are optional here, you might not need/want them */
	margin-top: -1px;
	margin-left: -1px;
}

.collection .child {
	outline: 1px solid; /* use instead of border */
	margin-top: 1px;
	margin-left: 1px;
}

Note that outline doesn't work in older browsers (IE7 and earlier).

Alternately, you can stick with the borders and use negative margins:

.collection .child {
	margin-top: -1px;
	margin-left: -1px;
}

Solution 2 - Css

#divNumberOne { border-right: 0; }

Solution 3 - Css

HTML:

<div>1</div>
<div>2</div>
<div>3</div>
<div>4</div>

​CSS:

div {
    border: 1px solid #000;
    float: left;
}

div:nth-child(n+2) {
    margin-left: -1px;
}

Demo

Include ie9.js for IE8 support (it's very useful for all CSS selectors/pseudo-elements).

Solution 4 - Css

Another solution one might consider is using the CSS Adjacent sibling selector.

The CSS

div {
    border: 1px solid black;
}

div + div {
    border-left: 0;
}
jsFiddle

Solution 5 - Css

I'm late to the show but try using the outline property, like so:

.item {
  outline: 1px solid black;
}

Outlines in CSS do not occupy physical space and will therefore overlap to prevent a double border.

Solution 6 - Css

You can use odd selector to achieve this

.child{
   width:50%;
   float:left;
   box-sizing:border-box;
   text-align:center;
   padding:10px;
   border:1px solid black;
   border-bottom:none;
}
.child:nth-child(odd){
   border-right:none;
}
.child:nth-last-child(2),
.child:nth-last-child(2) ~ .child{
   border-bottom:1px solid black
}


<div>
    <div class="child" >1</div>
    <div class="child" >2</div>
    <div class="child" >3</div>
    <div class="child" >4</div>
    <div class="child" >5</div>
    <div class="child" >6</div>
    <div class="child" >7</div>
    <div class="child" >8</div>
</div>

enter image description here

Solution 7 - Css

If the divs all have the same class name:

div.things {
    border: 1px solid black;
    border-left: none;
}

div.things:first-child {
    border-right: 1px solid black;
}

There's a JSFiddle demo here.

Solution 8 - Css

Add the following CSS to the div on the right:

position: relative;
left: -1px; /* your border-width times -1 */

Or just remove one of the borders.

Solution 9 - Css

Using Flexbox it was necessary to add a second child container to properly get the outlines to overlap one another...

<div class="grid__container">
    <div class="grid__item">
        <div class="grid__item-outline">
              <!-- content -->
        </div>
    </div>
</div>

SCSS

.grid__container {
    display: flex;
    flex-direction: row;
    flex-wrap: wrap;
    margin: 0 1px 0 0; // margin-right 1px to give the correct width to the container
}

.grid__item {
    flex: 0 1 25%; // grid of 4
    margin: 0 0 1px; // margin-bottom to prevent double lines
}

.grid__item-outline {
    margin: 0 0 0 1px; // margin-left to prevent double lines
    outline: 1px solid #dedede;
}

Solution 10 - Css

If you also need to change border colors on interaction (eg. swatch selector in a form), I found out a nice trick to do it, using a combination of negative margins, padding adjustment and transform translate. Check it out:

.parent{
  display: flex;
  width: 100%;
  max-width: 375px;
  margin-left:1px;
}

.child {
  margin-left: -1px;/* hide double borders behind their siblings */ 
  flex: 1 0 auto;
}

.child input {
  display:none
}

.child label {
  display:block;
  border: 1px solid #eaeaea;
  min-height: 45px;
  line-height: 45px;
  cursor: pointer;
  padding: 0 10px; /* will be changed when input is checked */
  font-size: 15px;
  text-align: center;
}

.child input:checked+label {
  border: 1px solid red;
  transform: translateX(-1px);
  padding-left: 11px;
  padding-right: 9px;
  background-color: #fafafa;
}


<div class="parent">
  <div class="child">
    <input id="swatch-1" type="radio" value="1" name="option" checked="true">
    <label for="swatch-1">Element 1</label>
   </div>
   <div class="child">
    <input id="swatch-2" type="radio" value="2" name="option">
    <label for="swatch-2">Element 2</label>
   </div>
   <div class="child">
    <input id="swatch-3" type="radio" value="3" name="option">
    <label for="swatch-3">Element 3</label>
   </div>
 </div>

Solution 11 - Css

  <div class="one"></div>
  <div class="two"></div>
  <div class="two"></div>
  <div class="two"></div>
  <div class="two"></div>

CSS:

  .one{
    width:100px;
    height:100px;
    border:thin red solid;
    float:left;
  }
.two{
    width:100px;
    height:100px;
    border-style: solid solid solid none;

    border-color:red;
    border-width:1px;
    float:left;
}

jsFiddle ​

Solution 12 - Css

I just use

border-collapse: collapse;

in the parent element

Solution 13 - Css

My use case was for boxes in a single row where I knew what the last element would be.

.boxes {
  border: solid 1px black  // this could be whatever border you need
  border-right: none;
}

.furthest-right-box {
  border-right: solid 1px black !important;
}

Solution 14 - Css

I know this is a late reaction, but I just wanted to drop my 2 cents worth, since my way of doing it is not in here.

You see, I really don't like playing with margins, especially negative margins. Every browser seems to handle these just that tad bit different and margins are easily influenced by a lot of situations.

My way of making sure I have a nice table with divs, is creating a good html structure first, then apply the css.

Example of how I do it:

 <div class="tableWrap">
   <div class="tableRow tableHeaders">
     <div class="tableCell first">header1</div>
     <div class="tableCell">header2</div>
     <div class="tableCell">header3</div>
     <div class="tableCell last">header4</div>
   </div>
   <div class="tableRow">
     <div class="tableCell first">stuff</div>
     <div class="tableCell">stuff</div>
     <div class="tableCell">stuff</div>
     <div class="tableCell last">stuff</div>
   </div>
</div>

Now, for the css, I simply use the rows structure to make sure the borders are only where they need to be, causing no margins;

.tableWrap {
  display: table;
  }

.tableRow {
  display: table-row;
  }

.tableWrap .tableRow:first-child .tableCell {
  border-top: 1px solid #777777;
  }

.tableCell {
  display: table-cell;
  border: 1px solid #777777;
  border-left: 0;
  border-top: 0;
  padding: 5px;
  }

.tableRow .tableCell:first-child {
  border-left: 1px solid #777777;
  }

Et voila, a perfect table. Now, obviously this would cause your DIVs to have 1px differences in widths (specifically the first one), but for me, that has never created any issue of any kind. If it does in your situation, I guess you'd be more dependant on margins then.

Solution 15 - Css

I was able to achieve it using this code:

td.highlight {
	outline: 1px solid yellow !important;
	box-shadow: inset 0px 0px 0px 3px yellow;
	border-bottom: 1px solid transparent !important;
}

Solution 16 - Css

A very old question, but it was the first google result, so for anyone that comes across this and doesn't want to have media queries to re-add the border to the right/left of the element on mobile etc.

The solution I use is:

.element {
    border: 1px solid black;
    box-shadow: 0 0 0 1px black;
}

This works because you'll see a 2px border around the element made of the border and the shadow. However, where the elements meet, the shadow overlaps which keeps it 2px wide;

Solution 17 - Css

To add to a 9 year old question, another clean and responsive way to achieve this is to:

  • Add a border-left and border-top to the parent
  • Add border-right and border-bottom to each of the children

Solution 18 - Css

What about giving a margin:1px; around your div.

<html>
<style>
.brd{width:100px;height:100px;background:#c0c0c0;border:1px solid red;float:left;margin:1px;}
</style>
<body>
	<div class="brd"></div>
	<div class="brd"></div>
	<div class="brd"></div>
</body>
</html>

DEMO

Solution 19 - Css

I prefer to use another div behind them as background and delete all the borders. You need just to calculate the size of the background div and the position of the foreground divs.

Categories
Recommended Css Solutions

Previous Solution:

Is there a way to pass the DB user password into the command line tool mysqladmin?

MysqlWindowsWindows Server-2008Mysqladmin

Next Solution:

Cannot convert []string to []interface {}

Type ConversionGo

Attributions

All content for this solution is sourced from the original question on Stackoverflow.

The content on this page is licensed under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.

Content TypeOriginal AuthorOriginal Content on Stackoverflow
Questionjohn smithView Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - CsscimmanonView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - CssAndyView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - CssGionaView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - CssStephanView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - CssMichael Giovanni PumoView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - CssyasaruiView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - CssRoddy of the Frozen PeasView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - CssbfavarettoView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 9 - Cssness-EEView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 10 - CssMaxView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 11 - CssAfshinView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 12 - CssJayCeeView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 13 - CssSam HendersonView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 14 - CssNoobishProView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 15 - CssestinamirView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 16 - CssabnoasView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 17 - CssJasperView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 18 - Cssdefau1tView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 19 - Csswell7mView Answer on Stackoverflow