How can I make my flexbox layout take 100% vertical space?

Question

You should set height of html, body, .wrapper to 100% (in order to inherit full height) and then just set a flex value greater than 1 to .row3 and not on the others.

.wrapper, html, body {
    height: 100%;
    margin: 0;
}
.wrapper {
    display: flex;
    flex-direction: column;
}
#row1 {
    background-color: red;
}
#row2 {
    background-color: blue;
}
#row3 {
    background-color: green;
    flex:2;
    display: flex;
}
#col1 {
    background-color: yellow;
    flex: 0 0 240px;
    min-height: 100%;/* chrome needed it a question time , not anymore */
}
#col2 {
    background-color: orange;
    flex: 1 1;
    min-height: 100%;/* chrome needed it a question time , not anymore */
}
#col3 {
    background-color: purple;
    flex: 0 0 240px;
    min-height: 100%;/* chrome needed it a question time , not anymore */
}

<div class="wrapper">
    <div id="row1">this is the header</div>
    <div id="row2">this is the second line</div>
    <div id="row3">
        <div id="col1">col1</div>
        <div id="col2">col2</div>
        <div id="col3">col3</div>
    </div>
</div>

DEMO

set the wrapper to height 100%

.vwrapper {
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;

  flex-wrap: nowrap;
  justify-content: flex-start;
  align-items: stretch;
  align-content: stretch;

  height: 100%;
}

and set the 3rd row to flex-grow

#row3 {
   background-color: green;
   flex: 1 1 auto;
   display: flex;
}

demo

Let me show you another way that works 100%. I will also add some padding for the example.

<div class = "container">
  <div class = "flex-pad-x">
    <div class = "flex-pad-y">
      <div class = "flex-pad-y">
        <div class = "flex-grow-y">
         Content Centered
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

.container {
  position: fixed;
  top: 0px;
  left: 0px;
  bottom: 0px;
  right: 0px;
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
}

  .flex-pad-x {
    padding: 0px 20px;
    height: 100%;
    display: flex;
  }

  .flex-pad-y {
    padding: 20px 0px;
    width: 100%;
    display: flex;
    flex-direction: column;
  }

  .flex-grow-y {
    flex-grow: 1;
    display: flex;
    justify-content: center;
    align-items: center;
    flex-direction: column;
   }

As you can see we can achieve this with a few wrappers for control while utilising the flex-grow & flex-direction attribute.

1: When the parent "flex-direction" is a "row", its child "flex-grow" works horizontally. 2: When the parent "flex-direction" is "columns", its child "flex-grow" works vertically.

Hope this helps

Daniel