Build single or layered box shadows visually with live preview. Adjust offset, blur, spread, color and opacity. Copy CSS instantly.
Layers
4px
4px
12px
0px
20%
Presets
About CSS Box Shadow Generator
Visually design CSS box shadows for any HTML element. Add multiple shadow layers to create depth, glow effects, or inset shadows. The tool generates the box-shadow CSS property value ready to paste into your stylesheet.
Yes - click "Add Layer" to add additional shadows. CSS box-shadow supports multiple comma-separated values. Multiple layers let you create more complex effects like combining a soft ambient shadow with a sharp directional shadow.
An inset shadow is drawn inside the element rather than outside. It's useful for creating pressed/sunken button effects, inner glows, or depth effects inside cards and inputs.
Set horizontal and vertical offsets to 0, increase the spread and blur radius, and use a colored shadow. For example: box-shadow: 0 0 15px 5px rgba(99, 102, 241, 0.5); creates a purple glow.
No. Unlike outlines and borders, box-shadow does not affect the element's size or its position in the document flow. It is purely a visual effect that can overlap other elements.
About CSS Box Shadow Generator Online
The CSS box shadow generator online lets you visually design box-shadow styles for any HTML element and instantly copy the ready-to-use CSS declaration. Drag sliders to control horizontal and vertical offset, blur radius, spread radius, color, and opacity, then see the result live in the preview box. Add multiple shadow layers to create depth, glow effects, or inset pressed-button styles — all without writing a single line of CSS manually.
Web designers use it to prototype card shadows, button depth, and UI polish. Front-end developers use it to generate precise values to paste directly into stylesheets and design systems. Beginners learning CSS find the visual sliders much more intuitive than memorising the five-parameter box-shadow syntax. The built-in presets for Soft, Medium, Hard, Glow, Inset, and Layered shadows give anyone a professional starting point to customise from.
How to Use the CSS Box Shadow Generator
Choose a preset or start from scratch — Select from the preset buttons (Soft, Medium, Hard, Glow, Inset, Layered) for an instant starting point, or leave the default and adjust manually.
Adjust Horizontal Offset — Positive values move the shadow right; negative values move it left. A value of 0 centres the shadow horizontally.
Adjust Vertical Offset — Positive values move the shadow downward; negative values move it upward. Most card shadows use a small positive value.
Set Blur Radius — Higher values create softer, more diffuse shadow edges. A blur of 0 creates a hard, sharp shadow with no feathering.
Set Spread Radius — Positive values expand the shadow beyond the element boundaries; negative values contract it, which is useful for creating a subtle underlay shadow.
Choose Color and Opacity — Pick any shadow color using the color picker and set opacity from 0% (invisible) to 100% (solid). Using rgba with low opacity produces more natural-looking shadows.
Toggle Inset — Enable the inset option to draw the shadow inside the element instead of outside. This creates pressed or sunken effects for buttons and inputs.
Add layers — Click Add Layer to add a second, third, or additional shadow. Each layer has independent controls and the CSS output combines them with commas.
Copy CSS — Click the Copy CSS button to copy the complete box-shadow declaration to your clipboard, ready to paste into your stylesheet.
Box Shadow Parameters Explained
CSS box-shadow takes five values in order: horizontal offset (px), vertical offset (px), blur radius (px), spread radius (px), and color (any CSS color value including rgba). An optional inset keyword before the values switches the shadow from outside to inside the element. Multiple shadows are separated by commas — the first shadow listed appears on top. Understanding each parameter makes the CSS box shadow generator online much more powerful, as you can fine-tune each value with full knowledge of what it controls.
Tips for Getting the Best Results
Use low opacity for natural shadows: Real shadows are not solid black. Set the shadow color to black (#000000) and use an opacity between 5% and 20% for subtle, realistic depth. Higher opacity shadows look heavy and artificial except in high-contrast design contexts like dark mode cards.
Layer two shadows for depth: Combine a close, sharp shadow (small blur, small offset) with a far, soft shadow (large blur, large offset) to create depth that mimics how real objects cast shadows. Example: 0 1px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.12), 0 8px 24px rgba(0,0,0,0.08).
Use negative spread for floating effects: Set spread to a negative value (for example -4px) while keeping a moderate blur. This prevents the shadow from appearing on the sides and creates a cleaner bottom-shadow "floating card" effect popular in material design.
Use inset shadows for input fields: Inset shadows communicate depth and help users identify interactive form fields. A subtle inset shadow like inset 0 2px 4px rgba(0,0,0,0.06) gives inputs a recessed appearance without using borders alone.
Test your shadow on both light and dark backgrounds: A shadow that looks perfect on white may disappear on grey or become overpowering on dark backgrounds. After generating, test the CSS across different background colors used on your site to ensure the shadow works in all contexts.
Why Use a CSS Box Shadow Generator Online
Tweaking box-shadow values manually in a code editor requires repeated save-and-refresh cycles to see each change. The CSS box shadow generator online eliminates this friction with a live preview that updates as you drag each slider. The entire workflow from idea to copied CSS takes seconds. There is nothing to install, no sign-up required, and the tool works in any modern browser on any device.
Designers who do not write CSS daily benefit from the visual interface, while developers who write CSS constantly save time by prototyping visually and copying exact values rather than guessing and iterating. The multi-layer feature is particularly valuable — adding multiple shadows manually with correct comma syntax is tedious and error-prone, but the generator handles it automatically.
Frequently Asked Questions about CSS Box Shadow Generator
Yes. Click "Add Layer" to add additional shadows. Each layer has its own independent offset, blur, spread, color, and opacity controls. The generator combines all layers into a single comma-separated box-shadow value automatically. Multiple layers allow you to combine a sharp contact shadow close to the element with a soft ambient shadow further away, creating more realistic and visually refined depth effects.
Blur radius controls the softness of the shadow edges — a blur of 0 creates a hard-edged shadow, while larger values create a diffuse, feathered edge. Spread radius controls the overall size of the shadow — positive values make the shadow larger than the element, negative values make it smaller. You can use a negative spread with a moderate blur to create a shadow that only appears on one side of an element.
An inset shadow is drawn inside the element boundary rather than outside. It is used to create pressed button effects, sunken input fields, inner glow effects, and depth within card elements. Inset shadows are commonly combined with outer shadows on interactive elements to switch between raised (default) and pressed (active) visual states by toggling the inset value on :active or :focus pseudo-classes.
No. CSS box-shadow is a purely visual effect and does not affect the document flow or the layout of surrounding elements. Unlike margins, padding, or borders, box-shadow does not change the computed size of an element or push other elements away. This makes it safe to add or remove shadows from any element without affecting the layout — though large shadows that extend over adjacent elements may visually overlap other content.
Yes. The CSS box-shadow property has been fully supported in all major browsers — Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge — for well over a decade. No vendor prefix (-webkit-, -moz-) is required in modern CSS. The property works consistently across desktop and mobile browsers. If you need to support Internet Explorer 8 or earlier (which is extremely rare today), you would need a JavaScript polyfill, but IE9 and above support box-shadow natively.
Set both horizontal and vertical offsets to 0, use a moderate blur radius (10–20px), increase the spread radius (4–8px), and choose a vibrant shadow color with 40–60% opacity. For example: box-shadow: 0 0 16px 6px rgba(99, 102, 241, 0.5); creates an indigo glow around the element. The Glow preset in this generator applies these settings automatically as a starting point to customise.
No — this generator is specifically for the CSS box-shadow property, which applies to block elements like divs, buttons, and cards. The CSS text-shadow property uses a slightly different syntax (no spread radius parameter) and applies to text elements. The output from this generator should not be used directly for text-shadow. A dedicated text-shadow generator would be needed for that use case.
Click the "Copy CSS" button below the preview area. The complete box-shadow: ...; declaration is copied to your clipboard. Paste it directly into your CSS rule for the element you want to style. The output is standard, valid CSS that works in all modern browsers without modification. If you have multiple layers, all layers are included in the single copied declaration — no manual combining is needed.