How to Create Icon Buttons With CSS

As a front-end developer, you may have come across a scenario where you need to add an icon to a button.

Icon buttons have become popular in recent years, with designers using them to create more visually appealing and interactive interfaces.

In this CSS tutorial, we’ll be discussing how to create icon buttons with CSS, making use of some simple CSS techniques and font icons.


Font Icons

One of the simplest ways to add an icon to a button is by using font icons.

Font icons are scalable vector icons that are embedded into a font file, allowing you to style them with CSS.

There are a variety of free and paid font icon sets available online, including Font Awesome, Ionicons, and Material Design Icons.

In this tutorial, we’ll be using Font Awesome, which is one of the most popular font icon sets available.

HTML Markup

The first step in creating an icon button is to add the HTML markup for the button.

For this, we’ll be using a simple button element, with the text for the button and the icon within the button.

<button class="icon-button">
  <i class="fa fa-bell"></i>
  Notifications
</button>

In the HTML markup above, we’re using the .icon-button class for styling the button, and the .fa and .fa-bell classes for adding the font icon to the button.

CSS Styling

With the HTML markup in place, the next step is to add some CSS styling to the button to make it look like an icon button.

.icon-button {
  background-color: #3498db;
  color: #fff;
  border: none;
  border-radius: 5px;
  padding: 10px 15px;
  cursor: pointer;
}

.icon-button i {
  margin-right: 10px;
}

In the CSS code above, we’re styling the button by setting its background color, text color, border, border-radius, padding, and cursor.

We’re also styling the font icon within the button by adding a margin to the right of the icon.


Conclusion

In conclusion, creating icon buttons with CSS is a straightforward process that can be done with a few lines of HTML and CSS code.

By using font icons and CSS styling, you can add an icon to a button and make it look visually appealing.

Whether you’re a front-end developer, designer, or anyone else looking to create icon buttons, the techniques discussed in this tutorial will be a great starting point.