html - Centering in CSS Grid

Question

I'm trying to create a simple page with CSS Grid.

What I'm failing to do is center the text from the HTML to the respective grid cells.

I've tried placing content in separate divs both inside and outside of the left_bg and right_bg selectors and playing with some of the CSS properties to no avail.

How do I do this?

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

.container {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr;
  grid-template-rows: 100vh;
  grid-gap: 0px 0px;
}

.left_bg {
  display: subgrid;
  background-color: #3498db;
  grid-column: 1 / 1;
  grid-row: 1 / 1;
  z-index: 0;
}

.right_bg {
  display: subgrid;
  background-color: #ecf0f1;
  grid-column: 2 / 2;
  grid_row: 1 / 1;
  z-index: 0;
}

.left_text {
  grid-column: 1 / 1;
  grid-row: 1 / 1;
  position: relative;
  z-index: 1;
  justify-self: center;
  font-family: Raleway;
  font-size: large;
}

.right_text {
  grid-column: 2 / 2;
  grid_row: 1 / 1;
  position: relative;
  z-index: 1;
  justify-self: center;
  font-family: Raleway;
  font-size: large;
}

<div class="container">
  <!--everything on the page-->

  <div class="left_bg">
    <!--left background color of the page-->
  </div>
</div>

<div class="right_bg">
  <!--right background color of the page-->
</div>

<div class="left_text">
  <!--left side text content-->
  <p>Review my stuff</p>

  <div class="right_text">
    <!--right side text content-->
    <p>Hire me!</p>
  </div>
</div>

Answer 1

This answer has two main sections:

1. Understanding how alignment works in CSS Grid.
2. Six methods for centering in CSS Grid.

If you're only interested in the solutions, skip the first section.

---

The Structure and Scope of Grid layout

To fully understand how centering works in a grid container, it's important to first understand the structure and scope of grid layout.

The HTML structure of a grid container has three levels:

• the container
• the item
• the content

Each of these levels is independent from the others, in terms of applying grid properties.

The scope of a grid container is limited to a parent-child relationship.

This means that a grid container is always the parent and a grid item is always the child. Grid properties work only within this relationship.

Descendants of a grid container beyond the children are not part of grid layout and will not accept grid properties. (At least not until the subgrid feature has been implemented, which will allow descendants of grid items to respect the lines of the primary container.)

Here's an example of the structure and scope concepts described above.

Imagine a tic-tac-toe-like grid.

article {
  display: inline-grid;
  grid-template-rows: 100px 100px 100px;
  grid-template-columns: 100px 100px 100px;
  grid-gap: 3px;
}

You want the X's and O's centered in each cell.

So you apply the centering at the container level:

article {
  display: inline-grid;
  grid-template-rows: 100px 100px 100px;
  grid-template-columns: 100px 100px 100px;
  grid-gap: 3px;
  justify-items: center;
}

But because of the structure and scope of grid layout, justify-items on the container centers the grid items, not the content (at least not directly).

article {
  display: inline-grid;
  grid-template-rows: 100px 100px 100px;
  grid-template-columns: 100px 100px 100px;
  grid-gap: 3px;
  justify-items: center;
}

section {
    border: 2px solid black;
    font-size: 3em;
}

<article>
    <section>X</section>
    <section>O</section>
    <section>X</section>
    <section>O</section>
    <section>X</section>
    <section>O</section>
    <section>X</section>
    <section>O</section>
    <section>X</section>
</article>