How do I make the whole area of a list item in my navigation bar, clickable as a link?

I've got a horizontal navigation bar made from an unordered list, and each list item has a lot of padding to make it look nice, but the only area that works as a link is the text itself. How can I enable the user to click anywhere in the list item to active the link?

#nav {
  background-color: #181818;
  margin: 0px;
  overflow: hidden;
}

#nav img {
  float: left;
  padding: 5px 10px;
  margin-top: auto;
  margin-bottom: auto;
  vertical-align: bottom;
}

#nav ul {
  list-style-type: none;
  margin: 0px;
  background-color: #181818;
  float: left;
}

#nav li {
  display: block;
  float: left;
  padding: 25px 10px;
}

#nav li:hover {
  background-color: #785442;
}

#nav a {
  color: white;
  font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
  text-decoration: none;
}

<div id="nav">
  <img src="/images/renderedicon.png" alt="Icon" height="57" width="57" />
  <ul>
    <li><a href="#">One1</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Two</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Three</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Four</a></li>
  </ul>
</div>
<div>
  <h2>Heading</h2>
</div>

Solution 1:

Don't put padding in the 'li' item. Instead set the anchor tag to display:inline-block; and apply padding to it.

Solution 2:

Define your anchor tag css property as:

{display:block}

Then the anchor will occupy the entire list area, so your click will work in the empty space next to your list.

Solution 3:

Make the anchor tag contain the padding rather than the li. This way, it will take up all the area.

Solution 4:

Super, super late to this party, but anyway: you can also style the anchor as a flex item. This is particularly useful for dynamically sized/arranged list items.

a {
  /* This flexbox code stretches the link's clickable 
   * area to fit its parent block. */
  display:        flex;
  flex-grow:      1;
  flex-shrink:    1;
  justify-content: center;
}

(Caveat: flexboxes are obvs still not well supported. Autoprefixer to the rescue!)

Solution 5:

Use following:

a {
  display: list-item;
  list-style-type: none;
}