Explain nesting and grouping in CSS

Last Updated : 05 May, 2025

The Nesting & Grouping concepts in CSS is used to write efficient and precise code. These techniques help reduce the amount of code, improving page load times and overall readability.

Here, we will explore how nesting and grouping can optimize your code, enhance readability, and increase efficiency.

Understanding Nesting in CSS

Nesting in CSS allows you to nest one style rule inside another. The child rule's selector is relative to the parent rule's selector. This method enhances the modularity and maintainability of CSS stylesheets, making the code more readable.

Syntax:

class1_selector class2_selector id_selector  {
  property: value;
}

Example:

table tr th {
  background-color: beige;
}

Approach:

Select the id/class selector & add a space to separate one from the other.
Add the style properties for the elements.

Note: Be specific with the order of nesting.

Example: In this example, we will nest the <a> tag inside the <p> tag and <th> tag inside the <tr> tag.

HTML

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<head>
    <style>
        p a {
            color: green;
        }

        table tr th {
            background-color: beige;
        }
    </style>
</head>

<body>

    <p>
        This is a
        <a href="https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/community/">link</a>
        within a paragraph element.
    </p>

    <table style="width: 100%">
        <tr>
            <th>Name</th>
            <th>Age</th>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>Ram</td>
            <td>50</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>Rahul</td>
            <td>65</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>Vikram</td>
            <td>26</td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</body>

</html>

Output: We got <a> tag as green color and <th> of beige color using nesting.

Understanding Grouping in CSS

Grouping allows you to apply common styling properties to multiple elements at once. This reduces the length of your code, makes it easier to read, and speeds up page load times.

selector1, selector2 {
  property: value;
}

Example (Without Grouping):

Instead of writing this long code, specifying the same properties to different selectors:

h1 {
  padding: 5px;
  color: grey;
}
p {
  padding: 5px;
  color: grey;
}

We can group them and write like this & we need the comma(,) to group the various selectors.

h1, p {
 padding: 5px;
 color: grey;
}

Approach:

Add <style>tag inside <head> tag.
Add various tags inside <body> tag with content.
Inside <style> tag, we can group our selectors containing the same properties.

Example: In this example, we will group various selectors together.

HTML

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<head>
    <style>
        h1, h2, p, a {
            text-align: center;
            color: green;
        }
    </style>
</head>

<body>
    <h1>GeeksForGeeks</h1>
    <h2>Smaller heading!</h2>

    <p>This is
        <a href="https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/community/">
            anchor tag
        </a>
    </p>

    <p>This is a paragraph.</p>
</body>

</html>

Difference between Nesting & Grouping

Nesting	Grouping
Nesting property facilitates nesting one style rule inside another, with the selector of the child rule that is relative to the selector of the parent rule.	Grouping property provides the same properties with values to a number of selectors at a time.
It may help to simplify & manage the properties for the different elements at a time but It may be complicated if the number of nesting elements that contain the same properties, is increased. It may be difficult to manage such a nesting property.	It is simple to apply the properties to the number of different elements at a time & can be managed easily.
In this case, if we need to modify the property for any specific element ie, either the parent element or child element in CSS, we need to change it manually for that specific element, if it is in nesting. For large-size code, it may be an inefficient way to manage the CSS properties.	There are no restrictions as such in the grouping.

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Article Tags :

Explain nesting and grouping in CSS

Understanding Nesting in CSS

Understanding Grouping in CSS

Example (Without Grouping):

Difference between Nesting & Grouping

Nesting

Grouping

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