CSS Gradient Generator

This CSS gradient generator gives you a visual playground for building linear, radial, and conic gradients, then hands you production-ready CSS in one click. Instead of guessing hex values in a stylesheet and refreshing the browser, you tweak colors, angles, and positions live until the result looks right, and copy a value you can paste straight into a rule.

Gradient Types at a Glance

Type	Axis	Angle used?	Typical use
Linear	A straight line across the element	Yes	Hero backgrounds, buttons, borders
Radial	Rays from a center point	No — uses circle or ellipse	Spotlights, vignettes, glow effects
Conic	A sweep around a center	Yes (starting seam)	Color wheels, pie and progress charts

All three are CSS functions — linear-gradient(), radial-gradient(), and conic-gradient() — not image files. The browser computes the pixels, so the result scales to any element size without blurring and costs nothing in network terms.

How to Build One Here

1. Pick the type. Linear, radial, or conic. Changing the type immediately changes which controls matter.
2. Set the geometry. For linear and conic, adjust the angle. For radial, choose circle or ellipse.
3. Edit the color stops. Each row has a color swatch and a position from 0 to 100. Add rows with the Add color stop button.
4. Copy the CSS. The generated declaration is shown beneath the preview; the Copy button puts it on your clipboard.

The preview panel reflects every change instantly, so the code you copy is exactly the gradient you see. New stops default to a pink at 50%, and each stop’s position is a free number rather than a fixed slot, so you can place two stops at 20% and 25% for a tight band or bunch several at 100% to create a sharp final edge. The generator sorts stops by position before emitting the CSS, which means the visual order always matches the numeric order even if you typed them out of sequence.

Worked Example: A Three-Stop Button Gradient

Start from two stops and add one in the middle:

• #3b82f6 at 0%
• #8b5cf6 at 50%
• #ec4899 at 100%
• Type: linear, angle: 135deg

The generated value is:

background: linear-gradient(135deg, #3b82f6 0%, #8b5cf6 50%, #ec4899 100%);

A 135deg linear gradient runs from the top-left corner toward the bottom-right. Because the midpoint is a distinct violet rather than a blend of blue and pink, the transition stays clean. The same three stops with a radial type become radial-gradient(circle, …) and ignore the 135deg entirely.

Angles, Shapes, and Axes

For linear gradients, 0deg points up and angles increase clockwise, so 90deg sweeps left to right and 180deg top to bottom. For conic gradients, the same angle conventions rotate the starting seam. For radial gradients, the shape controls whether the rays form a perfect circle or stretch with the element as an ellipse. The stop positions are percentages along that axis: on a linear gradient, 0% is the end the axis starts from, and 100% is the far end. Two stops at the same position create a hard color boundary, which is how you build stripes and pie slices.

Angle values wrap: entering 450 is equivalent to 90, because the generator normalises the number into a 0–360 range. Negative angles also work and wrap the other way. The preview is sized to its container rather than a fixed width, so a gradient that looks right in the panel will stretch correctly when applied to a full-width hero. Because the panel and your target element receive the identical declaration, any difference after pasting comes from layout context — element size, border radius, overlaying content — rather than from the gradient itself.

Avoiding Muddy Midpoints

The most common visual complaint with gradients — a gray haze in the center of a blue-to-orange or red-to-green transition — comes from sRGB interpolation. The browser blends each channel independently, and complementary hues cross in the middle of the color cube. Two fixes work well: insert an intentional intermediate stop (a teal between blue and yellow), or stay within neighbouring hues and let lightness carry the variation. Dithering is not something this tool adds, so banding on large, low-contrast gradients can still appear on some displays; adding a subtle third stop usually breaks up the bands.

Gradients also complicate text contrast. A gradient can pass a contrast check at both endpoints and still dip below the threshold in the middle, so if you are placing a headline over it, sample the midpoint by eye or check the lightest and darkest regions separately rather than testing only the extremes. Darkening one end or adding a translucent overlay behind the text is usually simpler than redesigning the whole gradient.

Limitations

The generator emits a single background declaration using standard syntax supported by current browsers. It does not write vendor prefixes, so very old browsers will not understand the result. It also does not implement repeating-linear-gradient, color interpolation hints, or the newer in oklab interpolation method — the output is plain sRGB. The preview uses the same CSS you copy, so what you see in the panel is what a modern browser will paint.

Color input is limited to the swatch picker, which works in hex, and the emitted value is whatever the picker reports. If your design system expects a different color format, such as hsl() or an RGB triplet, you will need to convert after copying. There is no saved history and no export of a .css file; the workflow is deliberately one gradient at a time.

Related Tools

• Color Picker
• CSS Formatter
• Color Palette Generator