12 CSS Skeleton Loaders

Classic Shimmer

A diagonal gradient slides left-to-right across each placeholder bar — the most-recognised skeleton style, used by LinkedIn, Facebook, and Slack.

Classic Shimmer the 1st of 12 designs in the 12 CSS Skeleton Loaders collection. The design is implemented in pure CSS — no JavaScript required. Copy the HTML and CSS panels below into your project. Because the demo is pure CSS, it works in any framework or templating engine you happen to use. The design honours prefers-reduced-motion and uses real semantic markup, so it ships accessibility-ready out of the box.

Live preview

The code

<div class="sk-classic">
  <div class="sk-bar" style="width: 70%"></div>
  <div class="sk-bar" style="width: 90%"></div>
  <div class="sk-bar" style="width: 60%"></div>
</div>

.sk-classic {
  width: 220px;
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  gap: 10px;
}
.sk-bar {
  height: 12px;
  border-radius: 6px;
  background: linear-gradient(90deg, #1f1f28 0%, #2a2a36 50%, #1f1f28 100%);
  background-size: 200% 100%;
  animation: skClassic 1.4s linear infinite;
}
@keyframes skClassic {
  0% {
    background-position: 200% 0;
  }
  100% {
    background-position: -200% 0;
  }
}

@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {
  .sk-classic,
  .sk-classic * {
    animation: none !important;
  }
}