20 CSS Link Hover Effect Designs

Ink Bleed Underline

Hand-drawn-look SVG underline that strokes in from left to right on hover via stroke-dasharray. Reads as ink bleeding into paper.

Ink Bleed Underline the 15th 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

<a href="#" class="cle-ink">
  <span>Subscribe</span>
  <svg class="cle-ink-line" viewBox="0 0 120 8" preserveAspectRatio="none" aria-hidden="true">
    <path
      d="M2 5 Q 30 1 60 4 T 118 5"
      stroke="currentColor"
      stroke-width="2.5"
      fill="none"
      stroke-linecap="round"
    />
  </svg>
</a>

.cle-ink {
  position: relative;
  display: inline-block;
  padding-bottom: 8px;
  color: #ffd479;
  font:
    600 16px/1.2 Georgia,
    "Times New Roman",
    serif;
  text-decoration: none;
}
.cle-ink-line {
  position: absolute;
  left: 0;
  right: 0;
  bottom: 0;
  width: 100%;
  height: 8px;
  color: #ffd479;
  pointer-events: none;
}
.cle-ink-line path {
  stroke-dasharray: 200;
  stroke-dashoffset: 200;
  transition: stroke-dashoffset 0.7s cubic-bezier(0.65, 0, 0.35, 1);
}
.cle-ink:hover .cle-ink-line path,
.cle-ink:focus-visible .cle-ink-line path {
  stroke-dashoffset: 0;
}