three pixel offset by margin
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <title></title> <style type='text/css'> div#container { margin: 0 20px; background: red; width: 300px; } div#float { background: lightgrey; float: left; border: 1px solid black; width: 75px; height: 50px; } p { margin-left: 76px; border: 1px solid black; } </style> </head> <body> <div id='container'> <div id='float'> Float text. </div> <p> Paragraph text. Paragraph text. Paragraph text. </p> </div> </body> </html>