Why don’t my SVG images scale using the CSS "width" property?

SVGs are different than bitmap images such as PNG etc. If an SVG has a viewBox - as yours appear to - then it will be scaled to fit it's defined viewport. It won't directly scale like a PNG would.

So increasing the width of the img won't make the icons any taller if the height is restricted. You'll just end up with the img horizontally centred in a wider box.

I believe your problem is that your SVGs have a fixed height defined in them. Open up the SVG files and make sure they either:

  1. have no width and height defined, or
  2. have width and height both set to "100%".

That should solve your problem. If it doesn't, post one of your SVGs into your question so we can see how it is defined.


I had to figure it out myself but some svgs your need to match the viewBox & width+height in.

E.g. if it already has width="x" height="y" then =>

add <svg ... viewBox="0 0 [width] [height]">

and the opposite.

After that it will scale with <svg ... style="width: xxx; height: yyy;">


  1. If the svg file has a height and width already defined width="100" height="100" in the svg file then add this x="0px" y="0px" width="100" height="100" viewBox="0 0 100 100" while keeping the already defined width="100" height="100".
  2. Then you can scale the svg in your css file by using a selector in your case img so you could then do this: img{height: 20px; width: 20px;} and the image will scale.

Tags:

Html

Css

Svg

Sass