Widget title styling

I’m trying to add a background color to my widget titles, but just around the text not the entire width of the title area. I have this in my css which almost does it, but because of the float: left it brings the widget content area up beside the title.

.widget-title {
 background: #495965;
 color: white;
 float: left;
 font-size: 150%;
 margin-top: 0;
 padding: 0px 10px 0 8px;
 position: relative;
 left: -8px;
 margin-bottom: 0.4em;
}

I can’t post a link to the site because it’s hosted locally, best I can do is post an image. http://img834.imageshack.us/f/widgettitles.jpg/