Lesson 23 / 28

Inheritance & the Cascade

Which properties pass down to children, and the full conflict-resolution order.

What inherits

Text-related properties like color, font-family, font-size, and line-height inherit from parent to child automatically. Box properties like margin, padding, and border do not.

The cascade order

When rules conflict, the browser checks in order: origin & importance (author styles vs !important), then specificity, then source order — the last rule of equal specificity wins.

Avoid !important

!important overrides normal specificity and is hard to undo later — reach for a more specific selector or reorganize CSS instead of reaching for !important.