How do you get the footer to stay at the bottom of a Web page?

To get a sticky footer:

  1. Have a <div> with class="wrapper" for your content.

  2. Right before the closing </div> of the wrapper place the <div class="push"></div>.

  3. Right after the closing </div> of the wrapper place the <div class="footer"></div>.

* {
    margin: 0;
}
html, body {
    height: 100%;
}
.wrapper {
    min-height: 100%;
    height: auto !important;
    height: 100%;
    margin: 0 auto -142px; /* the bottom margin is the negative value of the footer's height */
}
.footer, .push {
    height: 142px; /* .push must be the same height as .footer */
}

Use CSS vh units!

Probably the most obvious and non-hacky way to go about a sticky footer would be to make use of the new css viewport units.

Take for example the following simple markup:

<header>header goes here</header>
<div class="content">This page has little content</div>
<footer>This is my footer</footer>

If the header is say 80px high and the footer is 40px high, then we can make our sticky footer with one single rule on the content div:

.content {
    min-height: calc(100vh - 120px);
    /* 80px header + 40px footer = 120px  */
}

Which means: let the height of the content div be at least 100% of the viewport height minus the combined heights of the header and footer.

That's it.

* {
    margin:0;
    padding:0;
}
header {
    background: yellow;
    height: 80px;
}
.content {
    min-height: calc(100vh - 120px);
    /* 80px header + 40px footer = 120px  */
    background: pink;
}
footer {
    height: 40px;
    background: aqua;
}
<header>header goes here</header>
<div class="content">This page has little content</div>
<footer>This is my footer</footer>

... and here's how the same code works with lots of content in the content div:

* {
    margin:0;
    padding:0;
}
header {
    background: yellow;
    height: 80px;
}
.content {
    min-height: calc(100vh - 120px);
    /* 80px header + 40px footer = 120px  */
    background: pink;
}
footer {
    height: 40px;
    background: aqua;
}
<header>header goes here</header>
<div class="content">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Nam liber tempor cum soluta nobis eleifend option congue nihil imperdiet doming id quod mazim placerat facer possim assum. Typi non habent claritatem insitam; est usus legentis in iis qui facit eorum claritatem. Investigationes demonstraverunt lectores legere me lius quod ii legunt saepius. Claritas est etiam processus dynamicus, qui sequitur mutationem consuetudium lectorum. Mirum est notare quam littera gothica, quam nunc putamus parum claram, anteposuerit litterarum formas humanitatis per seacula quarta decima et quinta decima. Eodem modo typi, qui nunc nobis videntur parum clari, fiant sollemnes in futurum.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Nam liber tempor cum soluta nobis eleifend option congue nihil imperdiet doming id quod mazim placerat facer possim assum. Typi non habent claritatem insitam; est usus legentis in iis qui facit eorum claritatem. Investigationes demonstraverunt lectores legere me lius quod ii legunt saepius. Claritas est etiam processus dynamicus, qui sequitur mutationem consuetudium lectorum. Mirum est notare quam littera gothica, quam nunc putamus parum claram, anteposuerit litterarum formas humanitatis per seacula quarta decima et quinta decima. Eodem modo typi, qui nunc nobis videntur parum clari, fiant sollemnes in futurum.
</div>
<footer>
    This is my footer
</footer>

NB:

1) The height of the header and footer must be known

2) Old versions of IE (IE8-) and Android (4.4-) don't support viewport units. (caniuse)

3) Once upon a time webkit had a problem with viewport units within a calc rule. This has indeed been fixed (see here) so there's no problem there. However if you're looking to avoid using calc for some reason you can get around that using negative margins and padding with box-sizing -

Like so:

* {
    margin:0;padding:0;
}
header {
    background: yellow;
    height: 80px;
    position:relative;
}
.content {
    min-height: 100vh;
    background: pink;
    margin: -80px 0 -40px;
    padding: 80px 0 40px;
    box-sizing:border-box;
}
footer {
    height: 40px;
    background: aqua;
}
<header>header goes here</header>
<div class="content">Lorem ipsum 
</div>
<footer>
    This is my footer
</footer>


Sticky footer with display: flex

Solution inspired by Philip Walton's sticky footer.

Explanation

This solution is valid only for:

  • Chrome ≥ 21.0
  • Firefox ≥ 20.0
  • Internet Explorer ≥ 10
  • Safari ≥ 6.1

It is based on the flex display, leveraging the flex-grow property, which allows an element to grow in either height or width (when the flow-direction is set to either column or row respectively), to occupy the extra space in the container.

We are going to leverage also the vh unit, where 1vh is defined as:

1/100th of the height of the viewport

Therefore a height of 100vh it's a concise way to tell an element to span the full viewport's height.

This is how you would structure your web page:

----------- body -----------
----------------------------

---------- footer ----------
----------------------------

In order to have the footer stick to the bottom of the page, you want the space between the body and the footer to grow as much as it takes to push the footer at the bottom of the page.

Therefore our layout becomes:

----------- body -----------
----------------------------

---------- spacer ----------
                             <- This element must grow in height
----------------------------

---------- footer ----------
----------------------------

Implementation

body {
    margin: 0;
    display: flex;
    flex-direction: column;
    min-height: 100vh;
}

.spacer {
    flex: 1;
}

/* make it visible for the purposes of demo */
.footer {
    height: 50px;
    background-color: red;
}
<body>
    <div class="content">Hello World!</div>
    <div class="spacer"></div>
    <footer class="footer"></footer>
</body>

You can play with it at the JSFiddle.

Safari quirks

Be aware that Safari has a flawed implementation of the flex-shrink property, which allows items to shrink more than the minimum height that would be required to display the content. To fix this issue you will have to set the flex-shrink property explicitly to 0 to the .content and the footer in the above example:

.content {
  flex-shrink: 0;
}

.footer {
  flex-shrink: 0;
}

Alternatively, change the flex style for the spacer element into:

.spacer {
  flex: 1 0 auto;
}

This 3-value shorthand style is equivalent to the following full setup:

.spacer {
  flex-grow: 1;
  flex-shrink: 0;
  flex-basis: auto;
}

Elegantly works everywhere.

Tags:

Html

Css

Footer

Sticky Footer

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