CSS Text Shadow Generator

How to Use the Text Shadow Generator

1. Type your preview text in the Preview Text field to see how the shadow looks on your actual heading.
2. Choose a mode — Single for a basic shadow, Layered to stack multiple shadows, 3D Effect for depth, Neon Glow for a glowing look, or Presets for ready-made styles.
3. Adjust offset and blur — X and Y offsets position the shadow; blur controls softness. Text shadows have no spread radius.
4. Pick a color and opacity — dark semi-transparent colors for realistic shadows; bright saturated colors for neon effects.
5. Copy or download the CSS output and paste it into your stylesheet.

Understanding CSS text-shadow

The text-shadow property adds one or more shadow effects behind text. It is one of the most expressive CSS properties, enabling effects that range from subtle readability improvements to dramatic artistic treatments. Unlike box-shadow, it applies to the actual glyph shapes of the text, not the element's box, which makes it ideal for headings, logos, and decorative type.

The Parameters

Each text-shadow declaration takes three or four values: offset-x (horizontal position, can be negative), offset-y (vertical position, can be negative), an optional blur-radius (0 for a hard shadow), and a color. There is no spread radius and no inset keyword — these are specific to box-shadow. When the color is omitted, the shadow uses the element's current text color, which can be useful for theme-aware shadows.

Creating Neon Glow Effects

The neon glow effect is achieved by stacking multiple text-shadow layers with the same color (or similar colors) at increasing blur radii. The innermost layers have a small blur and high opacity to create a bright core. Outer layers have larger blur radii and lower opacity to create the diffused halo. A white inner layer is often added to simulate the light source. The background must be dark for neon effects to look convincing — neon light does not appear on light backgrounds.

3D Text with Stacked Shadows

A convincing 3D extrusion is created by stacking 6–10 shadow layers at incrementally increasing offsets, each in a slightly darker shade than the text color. For example, a blue heading might use shadows at 1px, 2px, 3px through 8px with progressively darker blue shades. A final dark shadow slightly larger than the rest simulates the base shadow. This is a pure CSS technique that works at any font size without images or SVG.

Readability and Accessibility

Subtle text shadows can dramatically improve readability by creating contrast between text and complex backgrounds. A dark shadow behind light text on a photograph, or a light shadow behind dark text on a patterned background, ensures the text remains legible without changing the background itself. For accessibility, keep the contrast ratio between the text color and the background above 4.5:1 (WCAG AA standard). Use our Color Contrast Checker to verify your combinations. Avoid heavy shadows on body text — reserve decorative effects for headings and display type.

Browser Support

The text-shadow property has been supported in all major browsers since 2008 and requires no vendor prefixes. It works on any element that renders text, including <h1>–<h6>, <p>, <span>, <a>, and button text. For box-shaped element shadows, use CSS Box Shadow instead. To add glowing borders and card shadows, combine box-shadow with carefully chosen background colors and the gradient effects from the CSS Gradient Generator.