How to center text vertically with a large font-awesome icon?

Question

I just had to do this myself, you need to do it the other way around.

• do not play with the vertical-align of your text
• play with the vertical align of the font-awesome icon

<div>
  <span class="icon icon-2x icon-camera" style=" vertical-align: middle;"></span>
  <span class="my-text">hello world</span>
</div>

Of course you could not use inline styles and target it with your own css class. But this works in a copy paste fashion.

See here: Vertical alignment of text and icon in button

If it were up to me however, I would not use the icon-2x. And simply specify the font-size myself, as in the following

<div class='my-fancy-container'>
    <span class='my-icon icon-file-text'></span>
    <span class='my-text'>Hello World</span>
</div>

.my-icon {
    vertical-align: middle;
    font-size: 40px;
}

.my-text {
    font-family: "Courier-new";
}

.my-fancy-container {
    border: 1px solid #ccc;
    border-radius: 6px;
    display: inline-block;
    margin: 60px;
    padding: 10px;
}

for a working example, please see JsFiddle

I use icons next to text 99% of the time so I made the change globally:

.fa-2x {
  vertical-align: middle;
}

Add 3x, 4x, etc to the same definition as needed.

After considering all suggested options, the cleanest solution seems to be setting line-height and vertical-align everything:

See Jsfiddle Demo

CSS:

div {
    border: 1px solid #ccc;
    display: inline-block;
    height: 50px;
    margin: 60px;
    padding: 10px;
}
#text, #ico {
    line-height: 50px;
}

#ico {
    vertical-align: middle;
}

if things aren't lining up, a simple line-height: inherit; via CSS on specific i.fa elements that are having alignment issues could do the trick simply enough.

You could also feasibly use a global solution, which due to a slightly higher CSS specificity will override FontAwesome's .fa rule which specifies line-height: 1 without requiring !important on the property:

i.fa {
  line-height: inherit;
}

Just make sure that the above global solution doesn't cause any other issues in places where you might also use FontAwesome icons.

a flexbox option - font awesome 4.7 and below

FA 4.x Hosted URL - https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css

div {
  display: inline-flex; /* make element size relative to content */
  align-items: center; /* vertical alignment of items */
  line-height: 40px; /* vertically size by height, line-height or padding */
  padding: 0px 10px; /* horizontal with padding-l/r */
  border: 1px solid #ccc;
}

/* unnecessary styling below, ignore */
body {display: flex;justify-content: center;align-items: center;height: 100vh;}div i {margin-right: 10px;}div {background-color: hsla(0, 0%, 87%, 0.5);}div:hover {background-color: hsla(34, 100%, 52%, 0.5);cursor: pointer;}

<link href="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css" rel="stylesheet"/>
<div>
    <i class='fa fa-2x fa-camera'></i>
    hello world
</div>

fiddle

http://jsfiddle.net/Hastig/V7DLm/180/

---

using flex and font awesome 5

FA 5.x Hosted URL - https://use.fontawesome.com/releases/v5.0.8/js/all.js

div {
  display: inline-flex; /* make element size relative to content */
  align-items: center; /* vertical alignment of items */
  padding: 3px 10px; /* horizontal vertical position with padding */
  border: 1px solid #ccc;
}
.svg-inline--fa { /* target all FA icons */
  padding-right: 10px;
}
.icon-camera .svg-inline--fa { /* target specific icon */
  font-size: 50px;
}
/* unnecessary styling below, ignore */
body {display: flex;justify-content: center;align-items: center;height: 100vh; flex-direction: column;}div{margin: 10px 0;}div {background-color: hsla(0, 0%, 87%, 0.5);}div:hover {background-color: hsla(212, 100%, 63%, 1);cursor: pointer;}

<script src="https://use.fontawesome.com/releases/v5.0.8/js/all.js"></script>
<div class="icon-camera">
    <i class='fas fa-camera'></i>
    hello world
</div>
<div class="icon-clock">
    <i class='fas fa-clock'></i>
    hello world
</div>

fiddle

https://jsfiddle.net/3bpjvof2/

The simplest way is to set the vertical-align css property to middle

i.fa {
    vertical-align: middle;
}