How to change a DIV padding without affecting the width/height ?

Solution 1:

Declare this in your CSS and you should be good:

* { 
    -moz-box-sizing: border-box; 
    -webkit-box-sizing: border-box; 
     box-sizing: border-box; 
}

This solution can be implemented without using additional wrappers.

This will force the browser to calculate the width according to the "outer"-width of the div, it means the padding will be subtracted from the width.

Solution 2:

Solution is to wrap your padded div, with fixed width outer div

HTML

<div class="outer">
    <div class="inner">

        <!-- your content -->

    </div><!-- end .inner -->
</div><!-- end .outer -->

CSS

.outer, .inner {
    display: block;
}

.outer {
    /* specify fixed width */
    width: 300px;
    padding: 0;
}

.inner {
    /* specify padding, can be changed while remaining fixed width of .outer */
    padding: 5px;
}