20 CSS Link Hover Effect Designs
Encircled
An SVG ellipse strokes itself around the linked text on hover via stroke-dasharray — a pen circling a phrase. Calm, editorial, and impossible to miss.
Encircled the 4th of 20 designs in the 20 CSS Link Hover Effect Designs 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="cle-circle-bg">
<p class="cle-circle-wrap">
Check out
<a href="#" class="cle-circle">
the link
<svg class="cle-circle-svg" viewBox="0 0 100 36" aria-hidden="true">
<ellipse
cx="50"
cy="18"
rx="46"
ry="14"
fill="none"
stroke="currentColor"
stroke-width="2"
/>
</svg>
</a>
here
</p>
</div> .cle-circle-bg {
padding: 24px;
background: #f4f5f9;
border-radius: 10px;
}
.cle-circle-wrap {
margin: 0;
font:
500 16px/1.5 system-ui,
sans-serif;
color: #2a2a3e;
}
.cle-circle {
position: relative;
display: inline-block;
padding: 0 6px;
color: #6b8cff;
font-weight: 600;
text-decoration: none;
}
.cle-circle-svg {
position: absolute;
inset: -4px -2px;
width: calc(100% + 4px);
height: calc(100% + 8px);
color: #6b8cff;
pointer-events: none;
overflow: visible;
}
.cle-circle-svg ellipse {
stroke-dasharray: 200;
stroke-dashoffset: 200;
transform-origin: center;
transform: rotate(-3deg);
transition: stroke-dashoffset 0.7s cubic-bezier(0.65, 0, 0.35, 1);
}
.cle-circle:hover .cle-circle-svg ellipse,
.cle-circle:focus-visible .cle-circle-svg ellipse {
stroke-dashoffset: 0;
}