hover on child without hover effect on parent

You can trick something ;)

Basically, use a :before pseudo-element for the child div, with its same size;

when you hover on the child div, enlarge the :before pseudo-element to cover the father div area; this will cause the father div hover effect to fall down, and then to come back to the original state. A precise combination of z-index is involved too.

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/gFu8h/ Dark Magic(tm)

.parent {
    width: 100px;
    height: 100px;
    padding: 50px;
    transition: background-color 1s;
    background: #3D6AA2;    
    position: relative;
    z-index: 1;
}

.parent:hover{
    background: #FFF;    
}

.child {
    height: 100px;
    width: 100px;
    background: #355E95;
    transition: background-color 1s;
    position: relative;
}

.child:hover {    
    background: #000;
}

.child:before{
    content: '';
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    bottom: 0;
    right: 0;
    left: 0;        
    z-index: -1;
    transition: background-color 1s;
}

.child:hover:before{
    top: -50px;
    bottom: -50px;
    left: -50px;
    right: -50px;     
    background: #3D6AA2;    
}
<div class="parent">
    <div class="child"></div>
</div>

Basically you can't : How to style the parent element when hovering a child element?

But a trick is to use a sibling element : http://jsfiddle.net/k3Zdt/8/

.parent {
  width: 100px;
  height: 100px;
  padding: 50px;
}

.child {
  height: 100px;
  width: 100px;
  background: #355E95;
  transition: background-color 1s;
  position: relative;
  top: -200px;
}

.child:hover {
  background: #000;
}

.sibling {
  position: relative;
  width: 100px;
  height: 100px;
  padding: 50px;
  top: -50px;
  left: -50px;
  background: #3D6AA2;
  transition: background-color 1s;    
}

.sibling:hover {
  background: #FFF;
}
<div class="parent">
    <div class="sibling"></div>
    <div class="child"></div>
</div>

Tags:

Css

Hover