Page-wide image loading strategies and the Core Web Vitals
Eager above-the-fold (88.4%), eager below-the-fold (82.6%), CSS backgrounds (64.4%), lazy below-the-fold (42.4%), and lazy above-the-fold (21.0%): how page-wide image loading affects Largest Contentful Paint.
21.0% of sites use lazy above-the-fold image loading strategies, and 82% of those sites have a good LCP, against 82% of all sites.
LCP pass rate
Sites with lazy above-the-fold image loading strategies have a good LCP most often: 82%, against 82% of all sites. Sites with lazy below-the-fold image loading have it least often, at 79%.
Image loading strategies usage
Eager above-the-fold is the most used: 88.4% of sites. Lazy above-the-fold is 21.0% of sites.
How page-wide image loading shifts the four LCP phases
Across the four LCP sub-parts in Chrome's field data, the largest gap between lazy above-the-fold and lazy below-the-fold sits in time to first byte (TTFB): 621 ms median for lazy above-the-fold against 706 ms for lazy below-the-fold. Overall median field LCP is 1.6s for lazy above-the-fold (TTFB 621 ms, load delay 409 ms, load duration 161 ms, render delay 244 ms) versus 1.7s for lazy below-the-fold.
Understanding image loading strategies
How browser viewport intersection gates lazy image fetches
Standard <img> elements without loading="lazy" are queued by the HTML preload scanner before layout runs (327 ms median LCP load delay on sites with eager above-the-fold images). When loading="lazy" is present on an image inside the initial viewport (21.0% of sites), Chromium withholds the network request until style and layout confirm viewport intersection, pushing median LCP resource load delay to 409 ms.
Keep above-the-fold hero and banner images eager while adding loading="lazy" to below-the-fold content and product grids. Across the web, 88.4% of sites ship eager above-the-fold images (82% good LCP, 327 ms load delay), 82.6% still leave below-the-fold images eager (81% good LCP), and 21.0% accidentally lazy-load an image inside the initial viewport (409 ms median load delay).
How image loading strategies plays out per platform
What the field data shows when you isolate a single CMS or framework.
WordPress 65,446 sites WordPress sites have eager below-the-fold images on 93% of sites and lazy above-the-fold images on 18.7%.
WordPress 6.3+ adds loading="lazy" to content images while omitting it on the first three images. Across 65,446 WordPress sites, 69% with eager above-the-fold images pass LCP compared with 66% when an above-the-fold image has loading="lazy".
Shopify 8,567 stores Shopify stores have eager above-the-fold images on 95%, lazy below-the-fold images on 80%, and lazy in-viewport images on 58%.
Shopify's Liquid image_tag filter accepts a loading parameter. Across Shopify storefronts, 95% have eager above-the-fold images, 80% have lazy below-the-fold images, and 58.4% have a lazy-loaded image inside the initial viewport (95% good LCP).
React & Next.js 9,561 sites 32.6% of React sites lazy-load at least one above-the-fold image.
Next.js <Image> components default to loading="lazy" unless priority or preload is passed. Across React sites, 96.6% render an eager image in the viewport and 32.6% have a visible viewport image with loading="lazy".
By Arjen Karel · 210,902 crawled sites (126,761 with phone Chrome field data, 202,078 sites with image loading strategies, October 2026). How we measured.