Image with declared width and height renders square before load

You can achieve the desired effect with the following solution.

HTML:

<img src="blank.gif" class="lazy" data-src="foo.png" width="1500" height="1800" alt="bar">  
             ▲                ▲  
             ║                ╚═══ The class will be used for the lazy loader below  
             ║  
             ╚═══ Use faulty gif here to hide it from showing before loaded

Hint: If you want the placeholder rectangle to be visible and in one color, consider using a 1x1 px image for blank.gif. It will load very fast and will stretch nicely to your proportions, filling it with the color of your choosing.

JavaScript:

/* lazyload.js (c) Lorenzo Giuliani
 * MIT License (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
 *
 * expects a list of:  
 * `<img src="blank.gif" data-src="my_image.png" width="600" height="400" class="lazy">`
 */

!function(window){
  var $q = function(q, res){
        if (document.querySelectorAll) {
          res = document.querySelectorAll(q);
        } else {
          var d=document
            , a=d.styleSheets[0] || d.createStyleSheet();
          a.addRule(q,'f:b');
          for(var l=d.all,b=0,c=[],f=l.length;b<f;b++)
            l[b].currentStyle.f && c.push(l[b]);

          a.removeRule(0);
          res = c;
        }
        return res;
      }
    , addEventListener = function(evt, fn){
        window.addEventListener
          ? this.addEventListener(evt, fn, false)
          : (window.attachEvent)
            ? this.attachEvent('on' + evt, fn)
            : this['on' + evt] = fn;
      }
    , _has = function(obj, key) {
        return Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty.call(obj, key);
      }
    ;

  function loadImage (el, fn) {
    var img = new Image()
      , src = el.getAttribute('data-src');
    img.onload = function() {
      if (!! el.parent)
        el.parent.replaceChild(img, el)
      else
        el.src = src;

      fn? fn() : null;
    }
    img.src = src;
  }

  function elementInViewport(el) {
    var rect = el.getBoundingClientRect()

    return (
       rect.top    >= 0
    && rect.left   >= 0
    && rect.top <= (window.innerHeight || document.documentElement.clientHeight)
    )
  }

    var images = new Array()
      , query = $q('img.lazy')
      , processScroll = function(){
          for (var i = 0; i < images.length; i++) {
            if (elementInViewport(images[i])) {
              loadImage(images[i], function () {
                images.splice(i, i);
              });
            }
          };
        }
      ;
    // Array.prototype.slice.call is not callable under our lovely IE8 
    for (var i = 0; i < query.length; i++) {
      images.push(query[i]);
    };

    processScroll();
    addEventListener('scroll',processScroll);

}(this);

Sources: The Lazyload script can be found here.

The following is the only solution that worked 100% of the time, and is much simpler: https://css-tricks.com/preventing-content-reflow-from-lazy-loaded-images/

In short you can use an SVG placeholder image that contains the dimenions:

<img src="data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 3 2'%3E%3C/svg%3E" data-src="//picsum.photos/900/600" alt="Lazy loading test image" />

Here is an React example:

const placeholderSrc = (width, height) => `data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 ${width} ${height}"%3E%3C/svg%3E`

const lazyImage = ({url, width, height, alt}) => {
  return (
    <img
      src={placeholderSrc(width, height)}
      data-src={url}
      alt={alt} />
  )
}