How to Create an Animated Border Gradient with Tailwind CSS (v3)

09/30/2022

Creating an elegant animated border shouldn't be difficult or messy with Tailwind CSS. Here's a straightforward and clean approach.

Faking the Border

First, we need our interactive element. For this example, I'll use an <a> tag. We create an illusion of a border by using a background color and padding.

<a href="#" class="inline-block bg-white p-0.5">
  <span class="block bg-gray-900 px-5 py-3 text-white"> Get Started </span>
</a>

Inside this, we add a <span> element that contains the text content of the element, along with the desired padding for our button or link.

Adding the Gradient

Next, we add the gradient.

I'll use a pre-made Tailwind CSS gradient from Hypercolor.

We apply the gradient to the interactive element with the faux border.

<a href="#" class="inline-block bg-white from-pink-500 via-red-500 to-yellow-500 p-0.5">
  <span class="block bg-gray-900 px-5 py-3 text-white"> Get Started </span>
</a>

You might worry that the gradient classes added will overwrite the bg-white, but it won't. For that to happen, we need to add the gradient direction class, which is done on hover.

Applying the Hover Effect

We can enhance what we've done by adding two more classes: one is a default Tailwind CSS class applied on hover, and the other is always applied, requiring some JIT (Just-In-Time) magic.

<a
  href="#"
  class="inline-block bg-white from-pink-500 via-red-500 to-yellow-500 bg-[length:_400%_400%] p-0.5 hover:bg-gradient-to-r"
>
  <span class="block bg-gray-900 px-5 py-3 text-white"> Get Started </span>
</a>

Let's break these down.

hover:bg-gradient-to-r

This applies the gradient direction class only on hover, which will display the gradient instead of bg-white.

bg-[length:400%_400%]

This enlarges the gradient, enabling us to animate it. Without this class, the gradient will appear static and won't animate.

Animating the Gradient

Now, let's animate.

First, we need to make some additions to our Tailwind CSS config.

theme: {
  extend: {
    animation: {
      border: 'background ease infinite',
    },
    keyframes: {
      background: {
        '0%, 100%': { backgroundPosition: '0% 50%' },
        '50%': { backgroundPosition: '100% 50%' },
      },
    },
  },
}

Here, we're creating an animation with the class animate-background using the background keyframes. This moves the gradient.

Finally, we add the animate-background class to the interactive element with the gradient classes.

You can use hover:animate-background if preferred, but note that the animation will reset when you're no longer hovering, which can cause it to look a bit jumpy.

The full example looks like this.

<a
  href="#"
  class="animate-background inline-block bg-white from-pink-500 via-red-500 to-yellow-500 bg-[length:_400%_400%] p-0.5 [animation-duration:_6s] hover:bg-gradient-to-r"
>
  <span class="block bg-gray-900 px-5 py-3 text-white"> Get Started </span>
</a>

We're using the arbitrary properties syntax to write [animation-duration:_6s] so we can alter the animation-duration for each use of the effect.

Here's how it looks. I've added some extra classes to enhance the <a>.

You can see these effects in action on the following blog card components: