One side shadow in CSS

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 css, css3

15 Responses to “One side shadow in CSS”

:

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:

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.
:

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/
:

April 22, 2012 at 7:28 pm

[...] One side shadow in CSS3 | Vacheslav Starikov [...]
Riaz:

June 18, 2012 at 12:43 pm

its not working in IE8 !!

while opening this site in IE8,i am unable to see these drop shadow effects..

give me some suggestion…
Damon:

June 20, 2012 at 3:34 am

Hmmmm this is good. But when you add “content: ‘ ‘;” all DIV is inactive.
Vacheslav:

July 20, 2012 at 2:40 pm

Riaz, IE8 doesn’t support CSS3.
Vacheslav:

July 20, 2012 at 2:41 pm

Damon, what do you mean “all DIV is inactive”? Could you explain this in more details? I use this approach and everything is OK.
BoMaZeN:

September 11, 2012 at 10:26 am

Thanks, that
CSS3 Box Shadow Anlat?m?:

November 6, 2012 at 3:13 pm

[...] https://starikovs.com/2011/11/09/css3-one-side-shadow/ [...]
:

November 14, 2012 at 11:20 pm

[...] all 4 directions(top, bottom, left, right), I found out an article to make only one side shadow:
Nemanja:

April 2, 2013 at 10:51 am

Thank you! This was very helpful.
helsywarner:

January 24, 2014 at 10:18 am

One side shadow sample

div {
border:5px solid #4FFFA1;
padding:30px;
background:#F6FFA1;
width:100px;
box-shadow: 5px 0 2px black;
}

full code: http://www.corelangs.com/css/box/round.html
css shadow

helsy

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