One side shadow in CSS3

November 9th, 2011

As You may suppose, there isn’t a standard way to set the box shadow for only one side of the box or leave one side of the element without a shadow. But You can reach it by using simple CSS tricks. Here You can analyze two examples.

In the first example, we will set box-shadow for only one side of the box.

In the second sample, only one side of the element will be without a shadow.

I hope everybody will understand this CSS so I won’t provide any other description. More code, less water)

Let’s start:

One side shadow

<div></div>

div {
  margin: 30px;
  height: 100px;
  width: 100px;
  position: relative;
  overflow: hidden;
  padding: 0 7px 0 0;
}
div:before {
  position: absolute; 
  content: ' '; 
  top: 0px; 
  right: 7px; 
  bottom: 0;
  left: 0; 
  background-color: transparent; 
  box-shadow: 0 0 5px black;
  border: 1px solid red;
}

One side without shadow

<div></div>

div {
  margin: 30px;
  height: 100px;
  width: 100px;
  position:relative;
  overflow: hidden;
  padding: 7px 7px 0 7px;
}
div:before {
  position: absolute; 
  content: ' '; 
  top: 7px; 
  right: 7px; 
  bottom: -7px;
  left: 7px; 
  background-color: transparent; 
  box-shadow: 0 0 5px black;
  border: 1px solid red;
}

Posted in css3

5 Responses to “One side shadow in CSS3”

Johan:

November 11, 2011 at 1:29 am

This is quite innovative, unfortunately Internet Explorer 9 does not support this.
Vacheslav:

November 11, 2011 at 10:54 am

I’ve just tested in IE9 and it works on my side. Try to use “Browser Mode: IE9″ and “Document Mode: IE9 standards”. You can select this by F12.

It doesn’t work by default because in my WordPress theme there’s a meta tag which switches to Document Mode of IE7:

<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=EmulateIE7″ />

I’ll try to fix it.
Vacheslav:

November 11, 2011 at 10:59 am

OK, I’ve commented this meta tag and now it works correctly.
Tomas Krejcar:

November 24, 2011 at 8:40 pm

I’m going to use this on a web site I’m working on right now, Thanks.
By using both :before and :after I was able to put shadows on two edges of a box.
Jo Liss:

December 20, 2011 at 2:48 pm

Thanks, that’s a great trick! Here is the second example in a jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/BxE42/

I think to make the numbers add up, you can use these numbers for the div:before attributes:

top: 6px; right: 6px; bottom: -1px; left: 6px;

That’s the padding you have on the div (7px and 0px), minus the border size on div:before (1px). Here is a fiddle for that: http://jsfiddle.net/ymmEf/

Vacheslav Starikov's