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CSS Underline: 10+ Examples

#css #html #beginners

To design links or create animations of menu buttons, you might need to use underlines. From this article, you’ll learn about several methods of creating a CSS underline: using text-decoration, border-bottom, background-image, box-shadow properties, or even SVG.

CSS Text-Decoration Property

The text-decoration property is the most straightforward way to underline text. The main issue with text-decoration, however, is its lack of customizability. We’ll see more customized examples further in this article.

For now, let’s see how we can use text-decoration for a simple CSS underline.

The text-decoration property is a shorthand property for 3 other properties:

text-decoration-line (required): overline, underline, underline overline, line-through
text-decoration-style: solid, dotted, dashed, wavy, double
text-decoration-color: for example, #ccc, blue, currentColor, or inherit
Here are several examples:

CSS text-decoration property

To remove the underline, simply use text-decoration: none.

If you want to add CSS underline on hover only, use these CSS rules:

 a { text-decoration: none; } a:hover { text-decoration: underline; }
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An alternative to text-decoration is the border-bottom property. With border-bottom, you can also add a padding. In the example below, the first link is created with the text-decoration property, and the second one with border-bottom:

text-decoration vs. border-bottom

 a:nth-of-type(1) { color: #32557f; text-decoration: underline #32557f dashed; } a:nth-of-type(2) { color: #32557f; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 2px dashed #32557f; padding-bottom: 3px; }
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Now let’s focus on fancier styling of the CSS underline.

Gradient Underline

You can create a gradient underline with background: linear-gradient and some other background properties. Here’s an example:

CSS gradient underline

 <p>Sharks are a <a href="#">group of elasmobranch fish</a> characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head.</p>
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 a::after { content: ""; display: block; width: 32px; padding-top: 3px; border-bottom: 2px solid #f9dd94; }
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Read more tips on CSS gradients in CSS Gradients: 8 Examples of Usage.

Short Underline

CSS underline can be of any width or height — even shorter than the word or the link. For example, if you need to create a short underline to mark the beginning of a sentence or a title, use the ::after pseudo-element with the border-bottom property:

CSS short underline

 <p>Sharks are a <a href="#">group of elasmobranch fish</a> characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head.</p>
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 a::after { content: ""; display: block; width: 32px; padding-top: 3px; border-bottom: 2px solid #f9dd94; }
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You can also set CSS underline thickness (for example, 2 px) by applying border-bottom: 2px solid #f9dd94;.

Marker-Style Underline

You can create a short skewed underline with the transform property:

Short marker-style CSS underline

 h1 { padding: 30px 0 8px; position: relative; } h1::before { content: ""; position: absolute; left: 7%; bottom: 16px; width: 150px; height: 14px; transform: skew(-12deg) translateX(-50%); background: rgba(238,111,87,0.5); z-index: -1; }
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Moreover, you can create a marker-style underline for a long piece of text. Here’s an example inspired by Codepen.io/Ash:

CSS marker-style underline

 body { padding: 4rem; } .box { padding: 2rem; max-width: 14rem; background-color: #f2f2f2; border-radius: 4px; max-width: 50rem; }
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Underline-specific styles:

 :root { /* The intrinsic width of the underline stroke (in pixels). This is * the same as the height of the cap images. Don't specify the * units! This is because of some of the calculations we do later on. */ --underline-intrinsic-width: 8; /* The actual width of the underline stroke we want to render (in pixels). * You can modify this, and the sizing and positioning should be calculated * accordingly. Again, Don't specify the units! */ --underline-width: 12; /* The color used to draw the underline. It should match the color * used in the cap images... unfortunately we can't modify the SVG * fill via CSS because it's a background image. */ --underline-color: #f1a1e3; /* We need to know the width of the cap images so that we * can position everything on the x axis accordingly. */ --underline-cap-width: 4px; /* The border is positioned relative to the bottom of the line. * We can move it upwards a little to create an overlap effect. */ --underline-offset-y: -2px; /* The padding to add to the x axis. By default, the caps would be * aligned with the beginning and end of the line. */ --underline-padding-x: 0.12em; } .text { display: inline; --underline-width-scale: calc(var(--underline-width) / var(--underline-intrinsic-width)); padding: 0 calc(var(--underline-padding-x) + calc(var(--underline-cap-width) * var(--underline-width-scale))); box-decoration-break: clone; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #32557f; background-image: linear-gradient(180deg, var(--underline-color), var(--underline-color)), var(--cap-image-left), var(--cap-image-right); background-position-x: calc(var(--underline-cap-width) * var(--underline-width-scale)), 0, 100%; background-position-y: calc(100% - var(--underline-offset-y) * -1); background-size: calc(100% - calc(var(--underline-cap-width) * var(--underline-width-scale) * 2)) calc(var(--underline-width) * 1px), auto calc(var(--underline-width) * 1px), auto calc(var(--underline-width) * 1px); font-size: 3rem; font-weight: bold; --underline-width: 20; --underline-offset-y: -2px; /* The cap images to use that form the left and right shape.*/ --cap-image-left: url(https://files-6lc03kjqt.now.sh/left-2.svg); --cap-image-right: url(https://files-e7gkh52mq.now.sh/right-2.svg); }
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Using Images as CSS Underline

You can also use actual images (e. g. SVG or PNG) to style CSS underlines. Here are a couple of examples inspired by John D. Jameson’s CodePen.

Star-shaped CSS underline:

Star-shaped CSS underline

 body { line-height: 1.6; } p { background-image: url("https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/s.cdpn.io/78779/star.svg"); background-position: 0 1.3em; background-size: 10px 9px; background-repeat: repeat-x; }
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You can find more underline examples on sharkcoder.com

Top comments (2)

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bawa_geek profile image
Lakh Bawa •

nice, I was looking for something like this

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lizlaffitte profile image
Liz Laffitte •

Love it! I tend to forget about using underlines as a way to complement style or improve the UX. I'm already brainstorming ways to use the marker underline.