With CSS, you can control the color, font, the size of text, the spacing between elements, how elements are positioned and laid out, what background images or background colors are to be used, different displays for different devices and screen sizes, and much more!

Tip: The word cascading means that a style applied to a parent element will also apply to all children elements within the parent. So, if you set the color of the body text to "blue", all headings, paragraphs, and other text elements within the body will also get the same color (unless you specify something else)!

Using CSS

CSS can be added to HTML documents in 3 ways:

• Inline - by using the style attribute inside HTML elements
• Internal - by using a
  
  

  This is a heading

  This is a paragraph.

  
  

  Try it Yourself »

  ---

  External CSS

  An external style sheet is used to define the style for many HTML pages.

  To use an external style sheet, add a link to it in the section of each HTML page:

  Example

  
  
  
   
  
  

  This is a heading

  This is a paragraph.

  
  

  Try it Yourself »

  The external style sheet can be written in any text editor. The file must not contain any HTML code, and must be saved with a .css extension.

  Here is what the "styles.css" file looks like:

  "styles.css":

  body {
    background-color: powderblue;
  }
  h1 {
    color: blue;
  }
  p {
    color: red;
  }

  Tip: With an external style sheet, you can change the look of an entire web site, by changing one file!

  ---

  CSS Colors, Fonts and Sizes

  Here, we will demonstrate some commonly used CSS properties. You will learn more about them later.

  The CSS color property defines the text color to be used.

  The CSS font-family property defines the font to be used.

  The CSS font-size property defines the text size to be used.

  Example

  Use of CSS color, font-family and font-size properties:

  
  
  
  

  
  
  This is a heading

  This is a paragraph.

  
  

  Try it Yourself »

  ---

  CSS Border

  The CSS border property defines a border around an HTML element.

  Tip: You can define a border for nearly all HTML elements.

  Example

  Use of CSS border property: 

  p {
    border: 2px solid powderblue;
  }

  Try it Yourself »

  ---

  CSS Padding

  The CSS padding property defines a padding (space) between the text and the border.

  Example

  Use of CSS border and padding properties:

  p {
    border: 2px solid powderblue;
    padding: 30px;
  }

  Try it Yourself »

  ---

  CSS Margin

  The CSS margin property defines a margin (space) outside the border.

  Example

  Use of CSS border and margin properties:

  p {
    border: 2px solid powderblue;
    margin: 50px;
  }

  Try it Yourself »

  ---

  Link to External CSS

  External style sheets can be referenced with a full URL or with a path relative to the current web page.

  Often the biggest challenge when working with a framework is figuring out what you’re supposed to do when there’s something you need that the framework doesn’t handle for you.

  Tailwind has been designed from the ground up to be extensible and customizable, so that no matter what you’re building you never feel like you’re fighting the framework.

  This guide covers topics like customizing your design tokens, how to break out of those constraints when necessary, adding your own custom CSS, and extending the framework with plugins.

  Customizing your theme

  If you want to change things like your color palette, spacing scale, typography scale, or breakpoints, add your customizations to the theme section of your

  
    {#each items as item}
      
  {item}
    {/each}
  

  0 file:

  module.exports = {
    theme: {
      screens: {
        sm: '480px',
        md: '768px',
        lg: '976px',
        xl: '1440px',
      },
      colors: {
        'blue': '#1fb6ff',
        'pink': '#ff49db',
        'orange': '#ff7849',
        'green': '#13ce66',
        'gray-dark': '#273444',
        'gray': '#8492a6',
        'gray-light': '#d3dce6',
      },
      fontFamily: {
        sans: ['Graphik', 'sans-serif'],
        serif: ['Merriweather', 'serif'],
      },
      extend: {
        spacing: {
          '128': '32rem',
          '144': '36rem',
        },
        borderRadius: {
          '4xl': '2rem',
        }
      }
    }
  }

  Learn more about customizing your theme in the Theme Configuration documentation.

  ---

  Using arbitrary values

  While you can usually build the bulk of a well-crafted design using a constrained set of design tokens, once in a while you need to break out of those constraints to get things pixel-perfect.

  When you find yourself really needing something like

  
    {#each items as item}
      
  {item}
    {/each}
  

  1 to get a background image in just the right spot, use Tailwind’s square bracket notation to generate a class on the fly with any arbitrary value:

  This is basically like inline styles, with the major benefit that you can combine it with interactive modifiers like

  
    {#each items as item}
      
  {item}
    {/each}
  

  2 and responsive modifiers like

  
    {#each items as item}
      
  {item}
    {/each}
  

  3:

  This works for everything in the framework, including things like background colors, font sizes, pseudo-element content, and more:

  It’s even possible to use the to reference the design tokens in your

  
    {#each items as item}
      
  {item}
    {/each}
  

  0 file:

  Arbitrary properties

  If you ever need to use a CSS property that Tailwind doesn’t include a utility for out of the box, you can also use square bracket notation to write completely arbitrary CSS:

  This is really like inline styles, but again with the benefit that you can use modifiers:

  This can be useful for things like CSS variables as well, especially when they need to change under different conditions:

  Arbitrary variants

  Arbitrary variants are like arbitrary values but for doing on-the-fly selector modification, like you can with built-in pseudo-class variants like

  
    {#each items as item}
      
  {item}
    {/each}
  

  6 or responsive variants like

  
    {#each items as item}
      
  {item}
    {/each}
  

  7 but using square bracket notation directly in your HTML.

  
    {#each items as item}
      
  {item}
    {/each}
  

  Learn more in the documentation.

  Handling whitespace

  When an arbitrary value needs to contain a space, use an underscore (

  
    {#each items as item}
      
  {item}
    {/each}
  

  8) instead and Tailwind will automatically convert it to a space at build-time:

  In situations where underscores are common but spaces are invalid, Tailwind will preserve the underscore instead of converting it to a space, for example in URLs:

  In the rare case that you actually need to use an underscore but it’s ambiguous because a space is valid as well, escape the underscore with a backslash and Tailwind won’t convert it to a space:

  If you’re using something like JSX where the backslash is stripped from the rendered HTML, use String.raw() so the backslash isn’t treated as a JavaScript escape character:

  Resolving ambiguities

  Many utilities in Tailwind share a common namespace but map to different CSS properties. For example

  
    {#each items as item}
      
  {item}
    {/each}
  

  9 and
  0 both share the
  1 namespace, but one is for
  2 and the other is for
  3.

  When using arbitrary values, Tailwind can generally handle this ambiguity automatically based on the value you pass in:

  Sometimes it really is ambiguous though, for example when using CSS variables:

  ...

  In these situations, you can “hint” the underlying type to Tailwind by adding a CSS data type before the value:

  ---

  Using CSS and @layer

  When you need to add truly custom CSS rules to a Tailwind project, the easiest approach is to just add the custom CSS to your stylesheet:

  For more power, you can also use the

  4 directive to add styles to Tailwind’s
  5,
  6, and
  7 layers:
  Why does Tailwind group styles into "layers"?

  In CSS, the order of the rules in your stylesheet decides which declaration wins when two selectors have the same specificity:

  Here, both buttons will be black since

  8 comes after
  9 in the CSS:

  ...
  ...

  To manage this, Tailwind organizes the styles it generates into three different “layers” — a concept popularized by .

  • The
    5 layer is for things like reset rules or default styles applied to plain HTML elements.
  • The
    6 layer is for class-based styles that you want to be able to override with utilities.
  • The
    7 layer is for small, single-purpose classes that should always take precedence over any other styles.

  Being explicit about this makes it easier to understand how your styles will interact with each other, and using the

  4 directive lets you control the final declaration order while still organizing your actual code in whatever way you like.

  The

  4 directive helps you control declaration order by automatically relocating your styles to the corresponding

  ...

  5 directive, and also enables features like and for your own custom CSS.

  Adding base styles

  If you just want to set some defaults for the page (like the text color, background color, or font family), the easiest option is just adding some classes to the

  ...

  6 or

  ...

  7 elements:

  This keeps your base styling decisions in your markup alongside all of your other styles, instead of hiding them in a separate file.

  If you want to add your own default base styles for specific HTML elements, use the

  4 directive to add those styles to Tailwind’s
  5 layer:

  Use the function or directive when adding custom base styles if you want to refer to any of the values defined in your theme.

  Adding component classes

  Use the

  6 layer for any more complicated classes you want to add to your project that you’d still like to be able to override with utility classes.

  Traditionally these would be classes like

  ...
  ...

  3,

  ...
  ...

  4,

  ...
  ...

  5 — that kind of thing.

  By defining component classes in the

  6 layer, you can still use utility classes to override them when necessary:

  Using Tailwind you probably don’t need these types of classes as often as you think. Read our guide on Reusing Styles for our recommendations.

  The

  6 layer is also a good place to put custom styles for any third-party components you’re using:

  Use the function or directive when adding custom component styles if you want to refer to any of the values defined in your theme.

  Adding custom utilities

  Add any of your own custom utility classes to Tailwind’s

  7 layer:

  @tailwind base;
  @tailwind components;
  @tailwind utilities;
  
  @layer utilities {
    .content-auto {
      content-visibility: auto;
    }
  }

  This can be useful when there’s a CSS feature you’d like to use in your project that Tailwind doesn’t include utilities for out of the box.

  Using modifiers with custom CSS

  Any custom styles you add to Tailwind with

  4 will automatically support Tailwind’s modifier syntax for handling things like hover states, responsive breakpoints, dark mode, and more.

  @tailwind base;
  @tailwind components;
  @tailwind utilities;
  
  @layer utilities {
    .content-auto {
      content-visibility: auto;
    }
  }

  Learn more about how these modifiers work in the Hover, Focus, and Other States documentation.

  Removing unused custom CSS

  Any custom styles you add to the

  5,
  6, or
  7 layers will only be included in your compiled CSS if those styles are actually used in your HTML.

  If you want to add some custom CSS that should always be included, add it to your stylesheet without using the

  4 directive:

  Make sure to put your custom styles where they need to go to get the precedence behavior you want. In the example above, we’ve added the

  @tailwind base;
  @tailwind components;
  @tailwind utilities;
  
  @layer utilities {
    .content-auto {
      content-visibility: auto;
    }
  }

  6 class before

  @tailwind base;
  @tailwind components;
  @tailwind utilities;
  
  @layer utilities {
    .content-auto {
      content-visibility: auto;
    }
  }

  7 to make sure utilities can still override it.

  Using multiple CSS files

  If you are writing a lot of CSS and organizing it into multiple files, make sure those files are combined into a single stylesheet before processing them with Tailwind, or you’ll see errors about using

  4 without the corresponding

  ...

  5 directive.

  The easiest way to do this is using the postcss-import plugin:

  module.exports = {
    plugins: {
      'postcss-import': {},
      tailwindcss: {},
      autoprefixer: {},
    }
  }
  

  Learn more in our documentation.

  Layers and per-component CSS

  Component frameworks like Vue and Svelte support adding per-component styles within a

  @tailwind base;
  @tailwind components;
  @tailwind utilities;
  
  @layer utilities {
    .content-auto {
      content-visibility: auto;
    }
  }

  0

  You lose the ability to control the precedence of your styles, but unfortunately that’s totally out of our control because of how these tools work.

  Our recommendation is that you just don’t use component styles like this at all and instead use Tailwind the way it’s intended to be used — as a single global stylesheet where you use the classes directly in your HTML:

  Use Tailwind's utilities instead of component styles

  ---

  Writing plugins

  You can also add custom styles to your project using Tailwind’s plugin system instead of using a CSS file: