Make body have 100% of the browser height

Try setting the height of the html element to 100% as well.

html, 
body {
    height: 100%;
}

Body looks to its parent (HTML) for how to scale the dynamic property, so the HTML element needs to have its height set as well.

However the content of body will probably need to change dynamically. Setting min-height to 100% will accomplish this goal.

html {
  height: 100%;
}
body {
  min-height: 100%;
}

---

As an alternative to setting both the html and body element's heights to 100%, you could also use viewport-percentage lengths.

5.1.2. Viewport-percentage lengths: the ‘vw’, ‘vh’, ‘vmin’, ‘vmax’ units The viewport-percentage lengths are relative to the size of the initial containing block. When the height or width of the initial containing block is changed, they are scaled accordingly.

In this instance, you could use the value 100vh - which is the height of the viewport.

Example Here

body {
  height: 100vh;
  padding: 0;
}

body {
  min-height: 100vh;
  padding: 0;
}

This is supported in most modern browsers - support can be found here.

---

If you have a background image then you will want to set this instead:

html{
  height: 100%;
}
body {
  min-height: 100%;
}

This ensures that your body tag is allowed to continue growing when the content is taller than the viewport and that the background image continues to repeat/scroll/whatever when you start scrolling down.

Remember if you have to support IE6 you will need to find a way to wedge in height:100% for body, IE6 treats height like min-height anyway.

---

If you want to keep the margins on the body and don't want scroll bars, use the following css:

html { height:100%; }
body { position:absolute; top:0; bottom:0; right:0; left:0; }

Setting body {min-height:100%} will give you scroll bars.

See demo at http://jsbin.com/aCaDahEK/2/edit?html,output .

---

After testing various scenarios, I believe this is the best solution:

html {
    width: 100%;
    height: 100%;
    display: table;
}

body {
    width: 100%;
    display: table-cell;
}

html, body {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
}

It is dynamic in that the html and the body elements will expand automatically if their contents overflow. I tested this in the latest version of Firefox, Chrome, and IE 11.

See the full fiddle here (for you table haters out there, you can always change it to use a div):

https://jsfiddle.net/71yp4rh1/9/

With that being said, there are several issues with the answers posted here.

html, body {
    height: 100%;
}

Using the above CSS will cause the html and the body element to NOT automatically expand if their contents overflow as shown here:

https://jsfiddle.net/9vyy620m/4/

As you scroll, notice the repeating background? This is happening because the body element's height has NOT increased due to its child table overflowing. Why doesn't it expand like any other block element? I'm not sure. I think browsers handle this incorrectly.

html {
    height: 100%;
}

body {
    min-height: 100%;
}

Setting a min-height of 100% on the body as shown above causes other problems. If you do this, you cannot specify that a child div or table take up a percentage height as shown here:

https://jsfiddle.net/aq74v2v7/4/

Hope this helps someone. I think browsers are handling this incorrectly. I would expect the body's height to automatically adjust growing larger if its children overflow. However, that doesn't seem to happen when you use 100% height and 100% width.

---

html, body
{
  height: 100%;
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
}

---

A quick update

html, body{
    min-height:100%;
    overflow:auto;
}

A better solution with today's CSS

html, body{ 
  min-height: 100vh;
  overflow: auto;
}

---

What I use on the start of literally every CSS file I use is the following:

html, body{
    margin: 0;

    padding: 0;

    min-width: 100%;
    width: 100%;
    max-width: 100%;

    min-height: 100%;
    height: 100%;
    max-height: 100%;
}

The margin of 0 ensures that the HTML and BODY elements aren't being auto-positioned by the browser to have some space to the left or right of them.

The padding of 0 ensures that the HTML and BODY elements aren't automatically pushing everything inside them down or right because of browser defaults.

The width and height variants are set to 100% to ensure that the browser doesn't resize them in anticipation of actually having an auto-set margin or padding, with min and max set just in case some weird, unexplainable stuff happens, though you probably dont need them.

This solution also means that, like I did when I first started on HTML and CSS several years ago, you won't have to give your first <div> a margin:-8px; to make it fit in the corner of the browser window.

Before I posted, I looked at my other fullscreen CSS project and found that all I used there was just body{margin:0;} and nothing else, which has worked fine over the 2 years I've been working on it.

Hope this detailed answer helps, and I feel your pain. In my eyes, it is dumb that browsers should set an invisible boundary on the left and sometimes top side of the body/html elements.

---

Here:

html,body{
    height:100%;
}

body{
  margin:0;
  padding:0
  background:blue;
}

---

You can also use JS if needed

var winHeight = window.innerHeight    || 
document.documentElement.clientHeight || 
document.body.clientHeight;

var pageHeight = $('body').height();
if (pageHeight < winHeight) {
    $('.main-content,').css('min-height',winHeight)
}

---

I would use this

html, body{ background: #E73; min-height: 100%; min-height: 100vh; overflow: auto; // <- this is needed when you resize the screen }

The browser will use min-height: 100vh and if somehow the browser is a little older the min-height: 100% will be the fallback.

The overflow: auto is necessary if you want the body and html to expand their height when you resize the screen (to a mobile size for example)

---

Try

<html style="width:100%; height:100%; margin: 0; padding: 0;">
<body style="overflow:hidden; width:100%; height:100%; margin:0; padding:0;">

---

Please check this:

* {margin: 0; padding: 0;}    
html, body { width: 100%; height: 100%;}

Or try new method Viewport height :

html, body { width: 100vw; height: 100vh;}

Viewport: If your using viewport means whatever size screen content will come full height fo the screen.

---

If you don't want the work of editing your own CSS file and define the height rules by yourself, the most typical CSS frameworks also solve this issue with the body element filling the entirety of the page, among other issues, at ease with multiple sizes of viewports.

For example, Tacit CSS framework solves this issue out of the box, where you don't need to define any CSS rules and classes and you just include the CSS file in your HTML.

---

There are some good answers here but also some misunderstandings. I support the following settings for modern browsers when styling for dimensions in web pages:

html {
    height: 100%; /* fallback for IE 4-6 and older browsers */
    height: 100vh;/* for modern browsers */
}

body {
    height: auto; /* required to allow content to grow without overflow */
    min-height: 100%; /* fallback for IE 4-6 and older browsers */
    min-height: 100vh;/* for modern browsers */
    width: auto;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
}

For starters, the new viewport units ("vh") are redundant and not necessary as long as you have set html to a height of 100% or 100vh. The reason is the body derives its values from the html parent. Older browsers will not inherit viewport height like newer browsers will, but they do know min-height. You can still use "vh" units in body to bypass the parent html value and get its property dimensions directly from the viewport in modern browsers. But its optional if html has 100% height, which body will inherit correctly.

Notice I've set body to height:auto. This collapses the body element around content initially so it can grow as content grows. You do NOT want to set body height and width to 100%, or specific values as that limits content to the viewport's dimensions and there will be overflow. height:auto is your best friend in CSS! Using overflow:auto properties are not needed if you set height:auto on the body. That tells the page to let content expand height to any dimension necessary, even beyond the viewport's height, if it needs to and content grows longer than the viewport page display. It will not break out of the body dimensions. And it does allow scrolling as needed. auto also allows you to have margins and still support pages that fill the viewport using min-height. I believe height:auto is the default on body in most UA browser style sheets, anyway.

Adding min-height:100% gives you the default height you want body to have and then allows the page dimensions to fill the viewport without content breaking out of the body. This works only because html has derived its 100% height based on the viewport.

The two CRITICAL pieces here are not the units, like % or vh, but making sure the root element, or html, is set to 100% of the viewport height. Second, its important that body have a min-height:100% or min-height:100vh so it starts out filling the viewport height, whatever that may be. Nothing else beyond that is needed.

STYLING HEIGHT FOR LEGACY BROWSERS

Notice I have added "fallback" properties for height and min-height, as many browsers pre-2010 do not support "vh" viewport units. It's fun to pretend everyone in the web world uses the latest and greatest but the reality is many legacy browsers are still around today in big corporate networks and many still use antiquated browsers that do not understand those new units. One of the things we forget is many very old browsers do not know how to fill the the viewport height correctly. Sadly, those legacy browsers simply had to have height:100% on both the html element and the body as by default they both collapsed height by default. If you did not do that, browser background colors and other weird visuals would flow up under content that did not fill the viewport. The example above should solve all that for you and still work in newer browsers. But before modern HTML5 browsers (post-2010) we solved that by eight setting height:100% in the html and body selectors, or min-height:100% in both tags.

---

html {
    background: url(images/bg.jpg) no-repeat center center fixed; 
    -webkit-background-size: cover;
    -moz-background-size: cover;
    -o-background-size: cover;
    background-size: cover;
    min-height: 100%;
}
html body {
    min-height: 100%
}

Works for all major browsers: FF, Chrome, Opera, IE9+. Works with Background images and gradients. Scrollbars are available as content needs.

---

Only with 1 line of CSS… You can get this done.

body{ height: 100vh; }

---

all answers are 100% correct and well explained, but i did something good and very simple to make it responsive.

here the element will take 100% height of view port but when it comes to mobile view it don't look good specially on portrait view ( mobile ), so when view port is getting smaller the element will collapse and overlap on each other. so to make it little responsive here is code. hope someone will get help from this.

<style>
.img_wrap{
      width:100%;
      background: #777;
}
.img_wrap img{
      display: block;  
      width: 100px;
      height: 100px;
      padding: 50px 0px;
      margin: 0 auto;
}
.img_wrap img:nth-child(2){
      padding-top: 0;
}
</style>

<div class="img_wrap">
  <img src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/84/fc/7184fc63db0516a00e7d86900d957925.jpg" alt="">
  <img src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/84/fc/7184fc63db0516a00e7d86900d957925.jpg" alt="">
</div>

<script>
   var windowHeight = $(window).height();
   var elementHeight = $('.img_wrap').height();

   if( elementHeight > windowHeight ){
       $('.img_wrap').css({height:elementHeight});
   }else{
       $('.img_wrap').css({height:windowHeight});
   }
</script>

here is JSfiddle Demo.

---

I style the div container - usually the sole child of the body with the following css

.body-container {
    position: fixed;
    left: 0;
    right: 0;
    top: 0;
    bottom: 0;
    height: 100%;
    display: flex;
    flex-direction: column;
    overflow-y: auto;
}

---

Over 20 answers later and none seem to have mentioned the factor that I found was the most crucial - the markup.

After trying basically every answer in this question and a few others, I restructured my markup to something like the following:

<body>
  <div class="section1">
    <nav>
    </nav>
    ...
  </div>
  <div class="section2">
  </div>
</body>

Essentially, it requires two different outer containers. The first container is for the purpose of containing the navbar and extending the background colour/image all the way to the height of the browser, and the second one for containing everything "below the fold" - including the second background colour/image.

This solution allows the first container's background to expand all the way to the bottom while keeping the second container free to take up as much space as it needs.

From this point on, the only CSS needed to get the result both I and the original question wanted is the following:

body {
  height: 100%;
}

.section1 {
  height: 100%;
  background: black; /* for demo purposes */
}

.section2 {
  background: white; /* for demo purposes */
}

---

Here Update

html
  {
    height:100%;
  }

body{
     min-height: 100%;
     position:absolute;
     margin:0;
     padding:0; 
}

---

For the true purists, this one respects the default margins of the browser, and prevents the undesired scroll generated by the other methods, besides growing if the content grows. Tested in Chrome, Safari and Firefox. The backgrounds are just for show...

html { display: flex; flex-direction: column; height: 100%; background: red; } body { flex:1; background: green; }

---

About the extra space at the bottom: is your page an ASP.NET application? If so, there is probably a wrapping almost everything in your markup. Don't forget to style the form as well. Adding overflow:hidden; to the form might remove the extra space at the bottom.

---

@media all {
* {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
}

html, body {
    width: 100%;
    height: 100%;
} }

---

CSS3 has a new method.

 height:100vh

It makes ViewPort 100% equal to the height.

So your Code should be

 body{
 height:100vh; 
 }

---