Animate solid background color to image

background-image, css, css-transitions, hover, html

Solution

You can't animate the `background` property from solid color to image with CSS3 transitions.

To achieve the desired behaviour, you will need to fade in/out a layer with your solid background color. You may use a pseudo element to minimize markup for the solid color latyer layer.

Here is an example :

div {
  position: relative;
  width: 250px;
  height: 250px;
  background: url(https://picsum.photos/250);
}
div:after {
  content: '';
  position: absolute;
  left: 0; top: 0;
  width: 100%; height: 100%;
  background: gold;
  opacity: 1;
  transition: opacity .5s;
}
div:hover:after {
  opacity: 0;
}

<div></div>

Problem

I've got a set of divs and I want each of them to have different background color and while on hover to transition to a background image of chosen url. I have so far managed to find code for smooth color -> image transition but that requires an actual img code in HTML and I need those divs as I will be putting text in them. Is there any chance to have a smooth 0.5s or less transition from background color to background image with CSS?

Original source