Imagine you have a cardboard box, and you have a ping pong ball. Let's say the radius of the ping pong ball is 1 inch. Take the ping pong ball and shove it into the corner of the cardboard box until it's nestled in there nice and snug. Since the ping pong ball is round, it's not a perfect fit into the square corners. There's a little bit of space left in between the ball and the edges of the box. Imagine you took a knife and carved away that extra space until the box fit perfectly around the ping pong ball. Or just collapsed the cardboard around the ball. The resulting shape is a box with a border radius of 1 inch. A larger border radius means a larger ball (or circle) that defines the area to be carved away, which means a more gradual curve. As for the reason why 100px can look the same as 10px: There's a point at which the ball you're trying to fit into the corner becomes larger than the box itself, so increasing the border radius no longer changes the shape of the corners. In the simplest case, assuming we have a perfectly square box, this happens when the diameter of the ball equals the length of any side. Since diameter is twice the radius, increasing border radius stops "working" once the radius increases beyond 1/2 the length of each side. Answer from CatchACrab on reddit.com
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MDN Web Docs
developer.mozilla.org › en-US › docs › Web › CSS › Reference › Properties › border-radius
border-radius - CSS | MDN
2 weeks ago - The border-radius CSS property rounds the corners of an element's outer border edge. You can set a single radius to make circular corners, or two radii to make elliptical corners.
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W3Schools
w3schools.com › cssref › css3_pr_border-radius.php
CSS border-radius property
The border-radius property defines the radius of the element's corners. Tip: This property allows you to add rounded corners to elements! This property can have from one to four values.
Discussions

Can someone explain border-radius?
Imagine you have a cardboard box, and you have a ping pong ball. Let's say the radius of the ping pong ball is 1 inch. Take the ping pong ball and shove it into the corner of the cardboard box until it's nestled in there nice and snug. Since the ping pong ball is round, it's not a perfect fit into the square corners. There's a little bit of space left in between the ball and the edges of the box. Imagine you took a knife and carved away that extra space until the box fit perfectly around the ping pong ball. Or just collapsed the cardboard around the ball. The resulting shape is a box with a border radius of 1 inch. A larger border radius means a larger ball (or circle) that defines the area to be carved away, which means a more gradual curve. As for the reason why 100px can look the same as 10px: There's a point at which the ball you're trying to fit into the corner becomes larger than the box itself, so increasing the border radius no longer changes the shape of the corners. In the simplest case, assuming we have a perfectly square box, this happens when the diameter of the ball equals the length of any side. Since diameter is twice the radius, increasing border radius stops "working" once the radius increases beyond 1/2 the length of each side. More on reddit.com
🌐 r/Frontend
7
3
December 24, 2021
html - Using a CSS border-radius much larger than an elements dimensions - Stack Overflow
Is there any issue with using a border-radius that is much larger than an element's dimensions? For example, if I wanted to make a class .circle like so: .circle { border-radius: 1000px; } So ... More on stackoverflow.com
🌐 stackoverflow.com
Border-radius % or px?
There is a difference between using percentage and pixel values. Example: http://jsfiddle.net/95anjwdb/ If the height and the width are equal, you don't see any difference. But if one side is larger, the border-radius: 50%; will act differently. In that case, 50% means "50% of that side". So the corner will actually be an ellipse. If you use 10000px, it will remain a circle. The very high value doesn't change anything because the maximum radius will always be half of the height (or of the smaller side) for some reason. In my example, a radius of 15px would be enough (because the div is 30px high). But if I applied the same border-radius to higher divs, I wouldn't want to update the value constantly. So I guess people use border-radius: 10000px as default. As long as it works... More on reddit.com
🌐 r/css
14
12
November 26, 2014
html - The border-radius property and border-collapse:collapse don't mix. How can I use border-radius to create a collapsed table with rounded corners? - Stack Overflow
I am trying to make a table with rounded corners using the CSS border-radius property. The table styles I'm using look something like this: table { -moz-border-radius: 10px; -webkit-border-... More on stackoverflow.com
🌐 stackoverflow.com
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Tailwind CSS
tailwindcss.com › docs › border-radius
border-radius - Borders - Tailwind CSS
Use utilities like rounded-s-md and rounded-se-xl to set the border radius using logical properties, which map to the appropriate corners based on the text direction:
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Border-radius
border-radius.com
CSS Border Radius Generator
CSS border radius generator for lazy people.
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CSS-Tricks
css-tricks.com › almanac › properties › b › border-radius
border-radius | CSS-Tricks
November 10, 2022 - Here is the code: div { height:250px; width:250px; background-image:url(image.jpg);} .round { border-radius: 60px; /* Prevent background color leak outs / border: 20px solid rgb(18, 50, 51); border: 20px solid rgba(18, 50, 51, 0.9); -webkit-background-clip: padding-box;/ for Safari / -moz-border-radius:360px;/ Firefox – alte Syntax */ } ... Using percentages is perfect for a responsive CSS Circle, but having it break below iOS 5.0 is a problem I’m having.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/frontend › can someone explain border-radius?
r/Frontend on Reddit: Can someone explain border-radius?
December 24, 2021 -

So, I've been doing some CSS challenges and they have some interesting forms, curves, overlapping elements and so on. I got the hang of them after a while, but by far, my biggest problem is with border-radii. I cannot understand how this works.

Yes, it makes rounded corners, but how it works, radius of what? And why I can give 10000000px and be the same computed value as 100px. Why it has 8 values?

Find elsewhere
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W3Schools
w3schools.com › css › css3_borders.asp
CSS Rounded Corners
The CSS border-radius property is used to create rounded corners for elements.
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9elements
9elements.github.io › fancy-border-radius
Fancy Border Radius Generator
A visual generator to build organic looking shapes with the help of CSS3 border-radius property
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DEV Community
dev.to › justtanwa › css-border-radius-2hn3
CSS - Border Radius - DEV Community
July 10, 2022 - Anyway, today I want to talk about a very popular CSS property -> border-radius. This property allows you to create awesome looking elements with nice curved edges/corners.
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CSS { In Real Life }
css-irl.info › logical-border-radius
CSS { In Real Life } | Logical Border Radius
December 15, 2022 - The first value is the radius is the horizontal direction, the second is in the vertical direction. So how about using the shorthand for unequal radii? Setting all of our radii to different values can result in uneven, organic-looking shapes. We can use the slash separator, first specifying the horizontal radii for each corner, then the vertical radii after the slash. div { border-radius: 2rem 8rem 8rem 9rem / 3rem 11rem 6rem 5rem; }
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Reality Ripple
udn.realityripple.com › docs › Web › CSS › border-radius
border-radius - CSS: Cascading Style Sheets
The border-radius CSS property rounds the corners of an element's outer border edge.
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MDN Web Docs
developer.mozilla.org › en-US › docs › Web › CSS › Reference › Properties › border-top-left-radius
border-top-left-radius - CSS | MDN
November 17, 2025 - The border-top-left-radius CSS property rounds the top-left corner of an element by specifying the radius (or the radius of the semi-major and semi-minor axes) of the ellipse defining the curvature of the corner.
Top answer
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There is no issue here at all. You're free to apply the class wherever you'd like, no issues really. Elements smaller than (height or width is less than) 2000px will become circles, elements larger than (height or width is more than) 2000px will not become circles, but rather stay their original shapes but have largely rounded corners.

This was brought up in W3 here:

"If any horizontal radius is larger than half the width of the box, it is reduced to that value. If any vertical radius is larger than half the height of the box, it is reduced to that value. (There are four horizontal and four vertical radii.) This is an easy algorithm, because it looks at each radius independently of all others, but it disallows possibly useful borders that combine large and small radii and it may turn quarter circles into quarter ellipses." - The documentation of the border-radius property

I should mention that you can use percents as a value, 50% being the max that will create a circle given the element is a square originally. If the element is not a square then it will create an ellipse.

Also note that all values above 50% will be equivalent to 50% when applied to all corners (like the shorthand border-radius: 50% which applies it to each corner). As jbutler483 pointed out in the comments, if it is applied to individual corners, 50% is not the same as 100% because of how they combine with each other. Instead all values above 100% are equivalent to 100%.

It's also important to note that something like border: 50% and border: really-high-pixel-value can have different effects if the element is not square.

Also of note, you can use the CSS constant of infinity if you want to set a really high pixel value (you have to use calc(infinity * 1px)).

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This was W3 CSS issue-29, which was resolved following option 3 in the issue as documented in the spec.

If any adjacent border radii are so large that they intersect, then all border radii are reduced proportionally so that none intersect.

In the particular case that all four radii are the same on a square element, and the radii are larger than half of the box dimensions, they get reduced to half of the width/height so that they end up forming a circle.

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Caniemail
caniemail.com › features › css-border-radius
Can I email… border-radius
The border-radius CSS property rounds the corners of an element’s outer border edge.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/css › border-radius % or px?
r/css on Reddit: Border-radius % or px?
November 26, 2014 -

Just taken over some CSS from another company and I came across "border-radius: 10000px;" to get a circle effect. I've always used "border-radius: 50%;" to get the same effect. Is there any reason they might have used 10000px? Unfortunately I can't get in touch with the previous devs.

Cheers!

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9elements
9elements.com › blog › css-border-radius-can-do-that
CSS Border-Radius Can Do That? - 9elements
October 19, 2018 - It is around for some years now, mostly used with a single value like this: border-radius: 1em and was maybe one of the most discussed/loved CSS3 features back in 2010 when css3please.com was your best friend.
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Can I Use
caniuse.com › border-radius
CSS3 Border-radius (rounded corners) | Can I use... Support tables for HTML5, CSS3, etc
Method of making the border corners round. Covers support for the shorthand border-radius as well as the long-hand properties (e.g.
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CoffeeCup Software
coffeecup.com › help › articles › borders-border-radius
Borders & Border Radius | CoffeeCup Software
March 16, 2022 - The toggles include Top-Left, Top-Right, Bottom-Right, Bottom-Left allowing you to set the x (horizontal) and y (vertical) radius of the element. ... There are many different designs that you can use that are fairly simple to setup and give you some amazing effects. As an example, add a button to your design and select the Top-Left and Bottom-Right border radius and apply 5px to both the x and y properties.
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Bootstrap
getbootstrap.com › docs › 5.3 › utilities › borders
Borders · Bootstrap v5.3
--#{$prefix}border-width: #{$border-width}; --#{$prefix}border-style: #{$border-style}; --#{$prefix}border-color: #{$border-color}; --#{$prefix}border-color-translucent: #{$border-color-translucent}; --#{$prefix}border-radius: #{$border-radius}; --#{$prefix}border-radius-sm: #{$border-radius-sm}; --#{$prefix}border-radius-lg: #{$border-radius-lg}; --#{$prefix}border-radius-xl: #{$border-radius-xl}; --#{$prefix}border-radius-xxl: #{$border-radius-xxl}; --#{$prefix}border-radius-2xl: var(--#{$prefix}border-radius-xxl); // Deprecated in v5.3.0 for consistency --#{$prefix}border-radius-pill: #{$border-radius-pill};