Which CSS properties are inherited?

Question

I've noticed that some properties are inherited in CSS, and some are not. For example, the text-size property is inherited, but the padding and margin are not inherited by the child blocks. So how to figure out which properties are inherited, and which are not?

Answer 1

Here is the list of all inheritable properies. I'm working with W3C's information, so I'd guess it should be correct. But knowing web browsers (IE specifically), some of these might not be inheritable by all browsers:

1. azimuth
2. border-collapse
3. border-spacing
4. caption-side
5. color
6. cursor
7. direction
8. elevation
9. empty-cells
10. font-family
11. font-size
12. font-style
13. font-variant
14. font-weight
15. font
16. letter-spacing
17. line-height
18. list-style-image
19. list-style-position
20. list-style-type
21. list-style
22. orphans
23. pitch-range
24. pitch
25. quotes
26. richness
27. speak-header
28. speak-numeral
29. speak-punctuation
30. speak
31. speech-rate
32. stress
33. text-align
34. text-indent
35. text-transform
36. visibility
37. voice-family
38. volume
39. white-space
40. widows
41. word-spacing

Answer 2

Blender's and Shaz's lists both enumerate all the inherited CSS 2.1 properties, including those for aural media such as azimuth. Here below is a list without the aural-oriented properties, now including CSS3 properties.

1. border-collapse
2. border-spacing
3. caption-side
4. color
5. cursor
6. direction
7. empty-cells
8. font-family
9. font-size
10. font-style
11. font-variant
12. font-weight
13. font-size-adjust
14. font-stretch
15. font
16. letter-spacing
17. line-height
18. list-style-image
19. list-style-position
20. list-style-type
21. list-style
22. orphans
23. quotes
24. tab-size
25. text-align
26. text-align-last
27. text-decoration-color
28. text-indent
29. text-justify
30. text-shadow
31. text-transform
32. visibility
33. white-space
34. widows
35. word-break
36. word-spacing
37. word-wrap

Answer 3

• azimuth
• border-collapse
• border-spacing
• caption-side
• color
• cursor
• direction
• elevation
• empty-cells
• font-family font-size
• font-style
• font-variant
• font-weight
• font
• letter-spacing
• line-height
• list-style-image
• list-style-position
• list-style-type
• list-style
• orphans
• pitch-range
• pitch quotes
• richness
• speak-header
• speak-numeral
• speak-punctuation
• speak
• speech-rate
• stress
• text-align
• text-indent
• text-transform
• visibility
• voice-family
• volume
• white-space
• widows
• word-spacing

^Source

Answer 4

The best reference-page to answer this and similar questions (say which CSS properties are NOT inherited) I've found is:

https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/propidx.html

It has a column for "inherited" (or not).

The page says "Several Sections of this specification have been updated". But I can't find a more up-to-date version of this anywhere, listing all CSS properties in a single concise table. But this table I think is great, just what I was looking for. Answers also the question of what are the possible values for each CSS-property, and the initial (= default) value.

If you want to see all inherited or non-inherited properties grouped together you could copy the text from the web-page and insert it into Excel etc. then sort it based on the column "Inherited?". It works I tried it.