Linear Gradients in CSS

You can now easily define radial and linear gradients in CSS. No need to create images in a seperate software anymore. They are still generated images internally to the browser, so you’ll want to define them in the background property or your elements, and you get plenty of flexibility for the direction and color stops.

Here we’ll explore the syntax for defining lineal gradients. See this post for radial gradients.

/* Simplest Case */
.box {
  background: linear-gradient(black, white);
}

/* Defining a direction and adding a 3rd color stop */
.box {
 background: linear-gradient(to top, #211533, #211533,
             #3e275f);
}

/* Direction in degrees instead */
.box {
 background: linear-gradient(135deg, #211533, #211533,
             #3e275f);
}

/* Control over the position of the color stops */
.box {
  background: linear-gradient(135deg, #211533 20%,
              #211533 40%, #3e275f);
}

Direction

You can define a linear gradient’s direction in degrees or using one of these keywords: top bottom, to top, to right, to left, to top left, to top right, to bottom left, to bottom right.

Default color for browsers that don’t support gradients

It’s a good idea to define a default base color that older browers will fall back on:

.box {
 background: #211533;
 background: linear-gradient(to top, #211533, #211533, #3e275f);
}

Browser Support

Can I Use css-gradients? Data on support for the css-gradients feature across the major browsers from caniuse.com.