How to center navbar elements vertically (Twitter Bootstrap)?

Question

This is my CSS/LESS CSS code so far:

//make navbar taller
@navbarHeight: 60px;

//make navbar link text 18px
.navbar-inner {
    font-size: 18px;
}

//make navbar brand text 36px
.navbar .brand {
    font-size: 36px;
}

Which produces this:

FYI I'm using the Twitter Bootstrap demo code, I haven't altered the html (aside from changing the brand name).

As you can see, the brand name is centered vertically within the navbar like it should be, but the navigation links are not (they're bit higher towards the top). The problem only became apparent once I altered the height of the navbar. How can I get them to be centred vertically (like this website, for example)?

If it's any help, highlighting the elements in Chrome shows this:

Answer 1

The .brand class uses a different line-height than the base text that is used throughout Bootstrap, as well as a few other key differences.

Relevant parts from the original bootstrap navbar LESS -

For .brand:

.brand {
  // Vertically center the text given $navbarHeight
  @elementHeight: 20px;
  padding: ((@navbarHeight - @elementHeight) / 2 - 2) 20px ((@navbarHeight - @elementHeight) / 2 + 2);
  font-size: 20px;
  line-height: 1;
}

For links in the navbar:

.navbar .nav > li > a {
  @elementHeight: 20px;
  padding: ((@navbarHeight - @elementHeight) / 2 - 1) 10px ((@navbarHeight - @elementHeight) / 2 + 1);
  line-height: 19px;
}

You'll probably need to play around with the values of @elementHeight, line-height, and maybe padding for the .navbar .nav > li > a selector to reflect the bigger 60px @navbarHeight (these default values are meant for a 40px @navbarHeight). Maybe try a 40px @elementHeight and/or a 29px line-height to start.