Skip to content

No.113 · Backgrounds

Slatted Light

Late light through window slats — blurred shafts across a dark room, a pattern on the floor, dust drifting in the beams.

The prompt

Written for the variant you picked above: Afternoon

Create an atmospheric, CSS-only background of low sun entering a dark room through window slats. Keep it spatial rather than decorative: there is a source, a volume of air, and a floor. The source: a large blurred glow just off the top-left corner that breathes very slightly. The shafts: a repeating linear gradient of alternating wide and narrow warm bands (the gaps between slats) at the beam angle, rotated and skewed, then masked with a linear gradient so the beams are strongest near the window and dissolve across the room. Blur them (5px) and screen-blend; duplicate the layer with a heavy 22px blur for volumetric haze. Both layers sway over 19s and 27s in opposite directions — a few degrees and 40px — as if the blinds breathe. Where the light lands, add a floor plane: a repeating stripe pattern put into perspective (rotateX ~58°), skewed to match the beams, masked into a soft pool, drifting in sync with the shafts. Finally, a dozen hand-placed dust motes drift slowly up through the beams and twinkle in and out, plus a whisper of film grain. Take the light colour, room colour and beam angle as props. Under reduced motion everything holds still and the motes are removed. Selected variant — Afternoon: Afternoon: warm cream light (#f1e3c8) in a near-black plum room (#0b080d), beams at 24°.

Notes

Interaction
None — ambient.
Motion
Beams sway 19s/27s alternate; floor drifts 19s; source breathes 14s; motes drift 17–26s with twinkle.
Accessibility
Entirely decorative and aria-hidden. Reduced motion freezes the scene and removes motes. Put text on the darker right/bottom side for contrast.
Responsive
Percentage-based layers scale to any container; beam angle and colours are props.

Featured

01Glassbreak ButtonA solid plate that fractures from one impact point, cracks racing outward as the shards drift apart.04Liquid GlassA capsule of glass that bends what's behind it, carries a specular highlight around its rim toward your pointer, and squashes like a drop of liquid when pressed.07Phosphor Glass ButtonA liquid-glass pill that senses you coming: its rim light turns to face the cursor and the pill leans in to meet it.08Iris ShutterAn async button with a camera iris for a status light — blades close and turn while it works, then open onto the result.
81Atmosphere CardSmoked-glass link cards: colour pooled in the corners, slow contour currents underneath, a field that leans toward you.93Eclipse Event CardAn editorial event plate with an oversized date and an orbital eclipse bleeding in from the right, alive with slow drift.94Specimen CardAn object mounted under glass: hover lifts the pane with a sweep of reflection and swings out a paper catalogue tag.
95Silk FieldDomain-warped light that pours like liquid silk, with an optional glass lens that refracts the flow under your cursor.106IsobarA living weather map — contour lines traced over a drifting pressure field, with your cursor as a system of its own.
151Prompt ComposerA chat composer where attached files tuck into its top edge like tabs in a folder — they rise from behind it when added and sink back when removed. Send turns into stop while the reply streams.157Aura FieldA writing field where colour only exists while the AI is touching your text: the edge becomes a turning band of light and the words are rewritten in place, one by one, out of a soft blur.
205Halftone CTAA tall CTA banner where slow gold paint drifts beneath a fixed halftone grid, visible only through the dots.
212Nocturne Sign-inA single quiet column on near-black with a breathing seam of frost light behind it — email, password, magic link, nothing more.222Sigil Sign-inA split sign-in whose left half grows a geometric mark from your email — the same address always draws the same sigil.
275Voices CarouselA testimonial exhibition: one large quote at a time on frosted glass, crossfading between voices without ever resizing.
279Feral TitleA brutal condensed wordmark — heartbeat in the dark, letters slam in, a gash tears through and the word bleeds.
301 components