You have a container with two elements with a class of box floated inside it, both are floated left with a width of 50% of the container. The two elements will sit side by side. However, the containing div may not actually containing the floated elements inside it.

The HTML:

<div class="container">
    <div class="box">
        <h1>Box 1</h1>
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    </div>
    <div class="box">
        <h1>Box 2</h1>
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    </div>
</div>

The CSS:

  .container{
    width: 500px;
    background-color: #fff;
    padding: 10px;
  }

  .box{
    float: left;
    width: 50%;
  }

[inline:floated.png] In demo 1, you can see that the text from both boxes are sitting side by side. But what happens if you add a border and background colour to the container?

  .container{
    width: 500px;
    background-color: #ccc;
    border: 1px #000 solid;
    padding: 10px;
  }

[inline:floated-border.png]

As you can see in demo 2, the background colour and border is not covering the boxes at all. This problem exists because floated (.box) elements are taken out of the flow of the document. Therefore, the container can not determine their height and its own height collapses.

There are various solutions and some involve adding extra divs or a clearfix class. If you want a clean solution without extra divs or classes, there are two good options: float the parent element or add overflow:auto to the parent.

##Float parent element

One solution is to float the parent element as well as the child elements. The parent element is the div with the container class so add float:left to it.

  .container{
    width: 500px;
    background-color: #ccc;
    border: 1px #000 solid;
    padding: 10px;
    float: left;
  }

  .box{
    float: left;
    width: 50%;
  }

In demo 3, you can see this working.

[inline:floated-parent.png]

##overflow:auto

In some cases, floating the parent element may cause layout issues. Luckily, there is an alternative, which is to add overflow:auto to the parent element.

  .container{
    width: 500px;
    background-color: #ccc;
    border: 1px #000 solid;
    padding: 10px;
    overflow: auto;
  }

  .box{
    float: left;
    width: 50%;
  }

If you have a good alternative solution, feel free to add it in the comments.