How To Zoom Image on Hover with CSS

In this article we will use CSS transitions and transforms properties to zoom image on hover.

HTML

<div>
  <img src="earth.jpg" alt="earth image">
</div>

CSS

html {
    box-sizing: border-box;
}

*,
*::after,
*::before {
    box-sizing: inherit;
}

body {
    padding: 0;
    margin: 0;
    height: 100vh;
    display: flex;
    justify-content: center;
    align-items: center;
}

This will center div.

Now let’s give height and width to div.

div {
    width: 500px;
    height: 500px;
}

But now image is going to be too big for the container. To illustrate it, I have given red border to div. You can see that image is too big and outside container.

To fit the image inside the container, add the following css code.

img {
    width: 100%;
}

Now to zoom image on hover, add the following code.

div:hover img {
    transform: scale(1.7);
}

To make it smooth zoom in, add the following code.

img {
    width: 100%;
    transition: all 0.5s;
}

Now the image scales smoothly but it goes outside the container as illustrated by the diagram below.

To confine the overflow of the image, add the following code.

div {
    width: 500px;
    height: 500px;
    overflow: hidden;
}

Complete CSS Code

html {
    box-sizing: border-box;
}

*,
*::after,
*::before {
    box-sizing: inherit;
}

body {
    padding: 0;
    margin: 0;
    height: 100vh;
    display: flex;
    justify-content: center;
    align-items: center;
}

div {
    width: 500px;
    height: 500px;
    overflow: hidden;
}

img {
    width: 100%;
    transition: all 0.5s;
}

div:hover img {
    transform: scale(1.7);
}