Style library interoperability

While you can use the Emotion-based styling solution provided by Material UI, you can also use the one you already know, from plain CSS to styled-components.

This guide aims to document the most popular alternatives, but you should find that the principles applied here can be adapted to other libraries. There are examples for the following styling solutions:

Plain CSS
Global CSS
Styled Components
CSS Modules
Emotion
Tailwind CSS
~~JSS~~ TSS

Plain CSS

Nothing fancy, just plain CSS.

PlainCssSlider.css

.slider {
  color: #20b2aa;
}

.slider:hover {
  color: #2e8b57;
}

PlainCssSlider.css

import * as React from 'react';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';
import './PlainCssSlider.css';

export default function PlainCssSlider() {
  return (
    <div>
      <Slider defaultValue={30} />
      <Slider defaultValue={30} className="slider" />
    </div>
  );
}

CSS injection order ⚠️

Note: Most CSS-in-JS solutions inject their styles at the bottom of the HTML <head>, which gives Material UI precedence over your custom styles. To remove the need for !important, you need to change the CSS injection order. Here's a demo of how it can be done in Material UI:

import * as React from 'react';
import { StyledEngineProvider } from '@mui/material/styles';

export default function GlobalCssPriority() {
  return (
    <StyledEngineProvider injectFirst>
      {/* Your component tree. Now you can override Material UI's styles. */}
    </StyledEngineProvider>
  );
}

Note: If you are using Emotion and have a custom cache in your app, that one will override the one coming from Material UI. In order for the injection order to still be correct, you need to add the prepend option. Here is an example:

import * as React from 'react';
import { CacheProvider } from '@emotion/react';
import createCache from '@emotion/cache';

const cache = createCache({
  key: 'css',
  prepend: true,
});

export default function PlainCssPriority() {
  return (
    <CacheProvider value={cache}>
      {/* Your component tree. Now you can override Material UI's styles. */}
    </CacheProvider>
  );
}

Note: If you are using styled-components and have StyleSheetManager with a custom target, make sure that the target is the first element in the HTML <head>. If you are curious to see how it can be done, you can take a look on the StyledEngineProvider implementation in the @mui/styled-engine-sc package.

Deeper elements

The following examples override the slider's thumb style in addition to the custom styles on the slider itself.

PlainCssSliderDeep1.css

.slider {
  color: #20b2aa;
}

.slider:hover {
  color: #2e8b57;
}

.slider .MuiSlider-thumb {
  border-radius: 1px;
}

PlainCssSliderDeep1.js

import * as React from 'react';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';
import './PlainCssSliderDeep1.css';

export default function PlainCssSliderDeep1() {
  return (
    <div>
      <Slider defaultValue={30} />
      <Slider defaultValue={30} className="slider" />
    </div>
  );
}

The above demo relies on the default className values, but you can provide your own class name with the slotProps API.

PlainCssSliderDeep2.css

.slider {
  color: #20b2aa;
}

.slider:hover {
  color: #2e8b57;
}

.slider .thumb {
  border-radius: 1px;
}

PlainCssSliderDeep2.js

import * as React from 'react';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';
import './PlainCssSliderDeep2.css';

export default function PlainCssSliderDeep2() {
  return (
    <div>
      <Slider defaultValue={30} />
      <Slider
        defaultValue={30}
        className="slider"
        slotProps={{ thumb: { className: 'thumb' } }}
      />
    </div>
  );
}

Global CSS

Explicitly providing the class names to the component is too much effort? You can target the class names generated by Material UI.

GlobalCssSlider.css

.MuiSlider-root {
  color: #20b2aa;
}

.MuiSlider-root:hover {
  color: #2e8b57;
}

GlobalCssSlider.js

import * as React from 'react';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';
import './GlobalCssSlider.css';

export default function GlobalCssSlider() {
  return <Slider defaultValue={30} />;
}

CSS injection order ⚠️

import * as React from 'react';
import { StyledEngineProvider } from '@mui/material/styles';

export default function GlobalCssPriority() {
  return (
    <StyledEngineProvider injectFirst>
      {/* Your component tree. Now you can override Material UI's styles. */}
    </StyledEngineProvider>
  );
}

import * as React from 'react';
import { CacheProvider } from '@emotion/react';
import createCache from '@emotion/cache';

const cache = createCache({
  key: 'css',
  prepend: true,
});

export default function GlobalCssPriority() {
  return (
    <CacheProvider value={cache}>
      {/* Your component tree. Now you can override Material UI's styles. */}
    </CacheProvider>
  );
}

Deeper elements

The following example overrides the slider's thumb style in addition to the custom styles on the slider itself.

GlobalCssSliderDeep.css

.MuiSlider-root {
  color: #20b2aa;
}

.MuiSlider-root:hover {
  color: #2e8b57;
}

.MuiSlider-root .MuiSlider-thumb {
  border-radius: 1px;
}

GlobalCssSliderDeep.js

import * as React from 'react';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';
import './GlobalCssSliderDeep.css';

export default function GlobalCssSliderDeep() {
  return <Slider defaultValue={30} />;
}

Styled Components

npm

Change the default styled engine

By default, Material UI components come with Emotion as their style engine. If, however, you would like to use styled-components, you can configure your app by following the styled-components guide or starting with one of the example projects:

Following this approach reduces the bundle size, and removes the need to configure the CSS injection order.

After the style engine is configured properly, you can use the styled() utility from @mui/material/styles and have direct access to the theme.

import * as React from 'react';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';
import { styled } from '@mui/material/styles';

const CustomizedSlider = styled(Slider)`
  color: #20b2aa;

  :hover {
    color: #2e8b57;
  }
`;

export default function StyledComponents() {
  return <CustomizedSlider defaultValue={30} />;
}

Deeper elements

The following examples override the slider's thumb style in addition to the custom styles on the slider itself.

import * as React from 'react';
import { styled } from '@mui/material/styles';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';
import Box from '@mui/material/Box';

const CustomizedSlider = styled(Slider)`
  color: #20b2aa;

  :hover {
    color: #2e8b57;
  }

  & .MuiSlider-thumb {
    border-radius: 1px;
  }
`;

export default function StyledComponentsDeep() {
  return (
    <Box sx={{ width: 300 }}>
      <Slider defaultValue={30} />
      <CustomizedSlider defaultValue={30} />
    </Box>
  );
}

import * as React from 'react';
import { styled } from '@mui/material/styles';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';
import Box from '@mui/material/Box';

const CustomizedSlider = styled(Slider)`
  color: #20b2aa;

  :hover {
    color: #2e8b57;
  }

  & .MuiSlider-thumb {
    border-radius: 1px;
  }
`;

export default function StyledComponentsDeep() {
  return (
    <Box sx={{ width: 300 }}>
      <Slider defaultValue={30} />
      <CustomizedSlider defaultValue={30} />
    </Box>
  );
}

Press Enter to start editing

The above demo relies on the default className values, but you can provide your own class name with the slotProps API.

import * as React from 'react';
import { styled } from '@mui/material/styles';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';

const CustomizedSlider = styled((props) => (
  <Slider slotProps={{ thumb: { className: 'thumb' } }} {...props} />
))`
  color: #20b2aa;

  :hover {
    color: #2e8b57;
  }

  & .thumb {
    border-radius: 1px;
  }
`;

export default function StyledComponentsDeep2() {
  return (
    <div>
      <Slider defaultValue={30} />
      <CustomizedSlider defaultValue={30} />
    </div>
  );
}

Theme

By using the Material UI theme provider, the theme will be available in the theme context of the styled engine too (Emotion or styled-components, depending on your configuration).

You are encouraged to share the same theme object between Material UI and the rest of your project.

const CustomizedSlider = styled(Slider)(
  ({ theme }) => `
  color: ${theme.palette.primary.main};

  :hover {
    color: ${darken(theme.palette.primary.main, 0.2)};
  }
`,
);

<ThemeProvider theme={customTheme}>
  <CustomizedSlider defaultValue={30} />
</ThemeProvider>

<ThemeProvider theme={customTheme}>
  <CustomizedSlider defaultValue={30} />
</ThemeProvider>

Press Enter to start editing

Portals

The Portal provides a first-class way to render children into a DOM node that exists outside the DOM hierarchy of the parent component. Because of the way styled-components scopes its CSS, you may run into issues where styling is not applied.

For example, if you attempt to style the tooltip generated by the Tooltip component, you will need to pass along the className property to the element being rendered outside of it's DOM hierarchy. The following example shows a workaround:

import * as React from 'react';
import { styled } from '@mui/material/styles';
import Button from '@mui/material/Button';
import Tooltip from '@mui/material/Tooltip';

const StyledTooltip = styled(({ className, ...props }) => (
  <Tooltip {...props} classes={{ popper: className }} />
))`
  & .MuiTooltip-tooltip {
    background: navy;
  }
`;

<StyledTooltip title="I am navy">
  <Button variant="contained" color="primary">
    Styled tooltip
  </Button>
</StyledTooltip>

<StyledTooltip title="I am navy">
  <Button variant="contained" color="primary">
    Styled tooltip
  </Button>
</StyledTooltip>

Press Enter to start editing

CSS Modules

It's hard to know the market share of this styling solution as it's dependent on the bundling solution people are using.

CssModulesSlider.module.css

.slider {
  color: #20b2aa;
}

.slider:hover {
  color: #2e8b57;
}

CssModulesSlider.js

import * as React from 'react';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';
// Webpack, Parcel or else will inject the CSS into the page
import styles from './CssModulesSlider.module.css';

export default function CssModulesSlider() {
  return (
    <div>
      <Slider defaultValue={30} />
      <Slider defaultValue={30} className={styles.slider} />
    </div>
  );
}

CSS injection order ⚠️

import * as React from 'react';
import { StyledEngineProvider } from '@mui/material/styles';

export default function GlobalCssPriority() {
  return (
    <StyledEngineProvider injectFirst>
      {/* Your component tree. Now you can override Material UI's styles. */}
    </StyledEngineProvider>
  );
}

import * as React from 'react';
import { CacheProvider } from '@emotion/react';
import createCache from '@emotion/cache';

const cache = createCache({
  key: 'css',
  prepend: true,
});

export default function CssModulesPriority() {
  return (
    <CacheProvider value={cache}>
      {/* Your component tree. Now you can override Material UI's styles. */}
    </CacheProvider>
  );
}

Deeper elements

If you attempt to style the Slider, you will likely need to affect some of the Slider's child elements, for example the thumb. In Material UI, all child elements have an increased specificity of 2: .parent .child {}. When writing overrides, you need to do the same. It's important to keep in mind that CSS Modules adds an unique id to each class, and that id won't be present on the Material UI provided children class. To escape from that, CSS Modules provides a functionality, the :global selector.

The following examples override the slider's thumb style in addition to the custom styles on the slider itself.

CssModulesSliderDeep1.module.css

.slider {
  color: #20b2aa;
}

.slider:hover {
  color: #2e8b57;
}

.slider :global .MuiSlider-thumb {
  border-radius: 1px;
}

CssModulesSliderDeep1.js

import * as React from 'react';
// Webpack, Parcel or else will inject the CSS into the page
import styles from './CssModulesSliderDeep1.module.css';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';

export default function CssModulesSliderDeep1() {
  return (
    <div>
      <Slider defaultValue={30} />
      <Slider defaultValue={30} className={styles.slider} />
    </div>
  );
}

The above demo relies on the default className values, but you can provide your own class name with the slotProps API.

CssModulesSliderDeep2.module.css

.slider {
  color: #20b2aa;
}

.slider:hover {
  color: #2e8b57;
}

.slider .thumb {
  border-radius: 1px;
}

CssModulesSliderDeep2.js

import * as React from 'react';
// Webpack, Parcel or else will inject the CSS into the page
import styles from './CssModulesSliderDeep2.module.css';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';

export default function CssModulesSliderDeep2() {
  return (
    <div>
      <Slider defaultValue={30} />
      <Slider
        defaultValue={30}
        className={styles.slider}
        slotProps={{ thumb: { className: styles.thumb } }}
      />
    </div>
  );
}

Emotion

npm

The `css` prop

Emotion's css() method works seamlessly with Material UI.

/* eslint-disable react/react-in-jsx-scope -- Unaware of jsxImportSource */
/** @jsxImportSource @emotion/react */
import { css } from '@emotion/react';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';
import Box from '@mui/material/Box';

export default function EmotionCSS() {
  return (
    <Box sx={{ width: 300 }}>
      <Slider defaultValue={30} />
      <Slider
        defaultValue={30}
        css={css`
          color: #20b2aa;

          :hover {
            color: #2e8b57;
          }
        `}
      />
    </Box>
  );
}

/* eslint-disable react/react-in-jsx-scope -- Unaware of jsxImportSource */
/** @jsxImportSource @emotion/react */
import { css } from '@emotion/react';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';
import Box from '@mui/material/Box';

export default function EmotionCSS() {
  return (
    <Box sx={{ width: 300 }}>
      <Slider defaultValue={30} />
      <Slider
        defaultValue={30}
        css={css`
          color: #20b2aa;

          :hover {
            color: #2e8b57;
          }
        `}
      />
    </Box>
  );
}

Press Enter to start editing

Theme

It works exactly like styled components. You can use the same guide.

The `styled()` API

It works exactly like styled components. You can use the same guide.

Tailwind CSS

npm

Setup

If you are used to Tailwind CSS and want to use it together with the Material UI components, you can start by cloning the Tailwind CSS example project. If you use a different framework, or already have set up your project, follow these steps:

Add Tailwind CSS to your project, following the instructions in https://tailwindcss.com/docs/installation.
Remove Tailwind CSS's preflight style so it can use the Material UI's preflight instead (CssBaseline).

tailwind.config.js

 module.exports = {
+  corePlugins: {
+    preflight: false,
+  },
 };

Add the important option, using the id of your app wrapper. For example, #__next for Next.js and "#root" for CRA:

tailwind.config.js

 module.exports = {
   content: [
     "./src/**/*.{js,jsx,ts,tsx}",
   ],
+  important: '#root',
   theme: {
     extend: {},
   },
   plugins: [],
 }

Most of the CSS used by Material UI has a specificity of 1, hence this important property is unnecessary. However, in a few edge cases, Material UI uses nested CSS selectors that win over Tailwind CSS. Use this step to help ensure that the deeper elements can always be customized using Tailwind's utility classes. More details on this option can be found here https://tailwindcss.com/docs/configuration#selector-strategy

Fix the CSS injection order. Most CSS-in-JS solutions inject their styles at the bottom of the HTML <head>, which gives Material UI precedence over Tailwind CSS. To reduce the need for the important property, you need to change the CSS injection order. Here's a demo of how it can be done in Material UI:

import * as React from 'react';
import { StyledEngineProvider } from '@mui/material/styles';

export default function GlobalCssPriority() {
  return (
    <StyledEngineProvider injectFirst>
      {/* Your component tree. Now you can override Material UI's styles. */}
    </StyledEngineProvider>
  );
}

Note: If you are using Emotion and have a custom cache in your app, it will override the one coming from Material UI. In order for the injection order to still be correct, you need to add the prepend option. Here is an example:

import * as React from 'react';
import { CacheProvider } from '@emotion/react';
import createCache from '@emotion/cache';

const cache = createCache({
  key: 'css',
  prepend: true,
});

export default function PlainCssPriority() {
  return (
    <CacheProvider value={cache}>
      {/* Your component tree. Now you can override Material UI's styles. */}
    </CacheProvider>
  );
}

Note: If you are using styled-components and have StyleSheetManager with a custom target, make sure that the target is the first element in the HTML <head>. If you are curious to see how it can be done, you can take a look at the StyledEngineProvider implementation in the @mui/styled-engine-sc package.

Change the target container for Portal-related elements so that they are injected under the main app wrapper that was used in step 3 for setting up the important option in the Tailwind config.

const rootElement = document.getElementById("root");
const root = createRoot(rootElement);

const theme = createTheme({
  components: {
    MuiPopover: {
      defaultProps: {
        container: rootElement,
      },
    },
    MuiPopper: {
      defaultProps: {
        container: rootElement,
      },
    },
    MuiDialog: {
      defaultProps: {
        container: rootElement,
      },
    },
    MuiModal: {
      defaultProps: {
        container: rootElement,
      },
    },
  },
});

root.render(
  <StyledEngineProvider injectFirst>
    <ThemeProvider theme={theme}>
      <App />
    </ThemeProvider>
  </StyledEngineProvider>;
);

Usage

Now it's all set up and you can start using Tailwind CSS on the Material UI components!

index.tsx

import * as React from 'react';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';

export default function App() {
  return (
    <div>
      <Slider defaultValue={30} />
      <Slider defaultValue={30} className="text-teal-600" />
    </div>
  );
}

Deeper elements

If you attempt to style the Slider, for example, you'll likely want to customize its child elements.

This example showcases how to override the Slider's thumb style.

SliderThumbOverrides.tsx

import * as React from 'react';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';

export default function SliderThumbOverrides() {
  return (
    <div>
      <Slider defaultValue={30} />
      <Slider
        defaultValue={30}
        className="text-teal-600"
        slotProps={{ thumb: { className: 'rounded-sm' } }}
      />
    </div>
  );
}

Styling pseudo states

If you want to style a component's pseudo-state, you can use the appropriate key in the classes prop. Here is an example of how you can style the Slider's active state:

SliderPseudoStateOverrides.tsx

import * as React from 'react';
import Slider from '@mui/material/Slider';

export default function SliderThumbOverrides() {
  return <Slider defaultValue={30} classes={{ active: 'shadow-none' }} />;
}

JSS TSS

JSS itself is no longer supported in Material UI, however, if you like the hook-based API (makeStyles → useStyles) that react-jss was offering you can opt for tss-react.

TSS integrates well with Material UI and provide a better TypeScript support than JSS.

import { render } from 'react-dom';
import { CacheProvider } from '@emotion/react';
import createCache from '@emotion/cache';
import { ThemeProvider } from '@mui/material/styles';

export const muiCache = createCache({
  key: 'mui',
  prepend: true,
});

//NOTE: Don't use <StyledEngineProvider injectFirst/>
render(
  <CacheProvider value={muiCache}>
    <ThemeProvider theme={myTheme}>
      <Root />
    </ThemeProvider>
  </CacheProvider>,
  document.getElementById('root'),
);

Now you can simply import { makeStyles, withStyles } from 'tss-react/mui'. The theme object that will be passed to your callbacks functions will be the one you get with import { useTheme } from '@mui/material/styles'.

If you want to take controls over what the theme object should be, you can re-export makeStyles and withStyles from a file called, for example, makesStyles.ts:

import { useTheme } from '@mui/material/styles';
//WARNING: tss-react require TypeScript v4.4 or newer. If you can't update use:
//import { createMakeAndWithStyles } from "tss-react/compat";
import { createMakeAndWithStyles } from 'tss-react';

export const { makeStyles, withStyles } = createMakeAndWithStyles({
  useTheme,
  /*
    OR, if you have extended the default mui theme adding your own custom properties:
    Let's assume the myTheme object that you provide to the <ThemeProvider /> is of
    type MyTheme then you'll write:
    */
  //"useTheme": useTheme as (()=> MyTheme)
});

Then, the library is used like this:

import { makeStyles } from 'tss-react/mui';

export function MyComponent(props: Props) {
  const { className } = props;

  const [color, setColor] = useState<'red' | 'blue'>('red');

  const { classes, cx } = useStyles({ color });

  //Thanks to cx, className will take priority over classes.root
  return <span className={cx(classes.root, className)}>hello world</span>;
}

const useStyles = makeStyles<{ color: 'red' | 'blue' }>()((theme, { color }) => ({
  root: {
    color,
    '&:hover': {
      backgroundColor: theme.palette.primary.main,
    },
  },
}));

For info on how to setup SSR or anything else, please refer to the TSS documentation.