Prismatic Sweep
Three skewed colour beams sweep across the card in a staggered sequence, like light through a prism.
Prismatic Sweep the 25th of 27 designs in the 27 CSS Card Hover Effects 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="card-25">
<div class="card-25__prism card-25__prism--a"></div>
<div class="card-25__prism card-25__prism--b"></div>
<div class="card-25__prism card-25__prism--c"></div>
<div class="card-25__content">
<span class="card-25__tag">Prism</span>
<h4 class="card-25__title">Prismatic Sweep</h4>
<p class="card-25__body">Three colour beams sweep across in sequence.</p>
</div>
</div> .card-25__tag {
font-family: monospace;
font-size: 10px;
padding: 2px 8px;
border-radius: 20px;
background: rgba(124, 108, 255, 0.15);
color: #7c6cff;
border: 1px solid rgba(124, 108, 255, 0.3);
display: inline-block;
margin-bottom: 10px;
}
.card-25__title {
font-size: 17px;
font-weight: 700;
color: #f0eeff;
margin-bottom: 6px;
}
.card-25__body {
font-size: 13px;
color: #b8b6d4;
line-height: 1.6;
}
.card-25 {
width: 100%;
max-width: 280px;
position: relative;
overflow: hidden;
padding: 22px;
border-radius: 14px;
background: #111118;
border: 1px solid rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.08);
cursor: pointer;
transition: border-color 0.3s;
}
.card-25:hover {
border-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2);
}
.card-25__prism {
position: absolute;
inset: -20%;
width: 30%;
transform: skewX(-18deg) translateX(-180%);
transition: transform 0.52s cubic-bezier(0.23, 1, 0.32, 1);
opacity: 0.18;
}
.card-25__prism--a {
background: #7c6cff;
left: 10%;
transition-delay: 0s;
}
.card-25__prism--b {
background: #ff6c8a;
left: 30%;
transition-delay: 0.08s;
}
.card-25__prism--c {
background: #3de8f5;
left: 50%;
transition-delay: 0.16s;
}
.card-25:hover .card-25__prism {
transform: skewX(-18deg) translateX(700%);
}
.card-25__content {
position: relative;
z-index: 1;
}