Many developers wonder whether to use Tailwind or a UI component library (like Material UI) when building their web applications. As you might expect, the answer depends on your project’s specific needs and I’ve shared some of my thoughts on this topic below.
When to Choose Tailwind over a UI Component Library?
Tailwind is best suited if you want full control over your styles and prefer building a custom design system from scratch. Tailwind at the end converts into native CSS which is more efficient than the CSS-in-JS used by most UI component libraries so if performance is something important to you then you might want to keep this in mind. Another great feature of Tailwind is that it automatically removes unused classes which can help in making the build size optimal. One more thing to point out (and this could be a bit subjective) is that I’ve also seen some developers complaining about readability issues when it comes to styling with Tailwind as your UI components get cluttered with a lot of styling classes so this might be one of the challenges that you come across using it. UI Component Libraries (like Material UI) on the other hand are ideal if you need pre-built, fully styled components that are ready to use out of the box but can make the build a bit heavier and performance slower compared to what you get with Tailwind. These libraries can save development time though, especially for projects where consistency and speed are priorities.
Can You Use Tailwind with a UI Component Library?
If you're using a fully styled library like Material UI, adding Tailwind might not be the best option. Material UI already comes with its own design system and styles, so combining it with Tailwind could lead to redundancy and potential conflicts. But if you still want to use Tailwind while taking advantage of a UI component library, consider a headless UI component library instead (for eg. Radix UI). These headless UI component libraries offer components without built-in styles, allowing you to design them entirely with Tailwind and customize their appearance to match your desired design system.
Conclusion
To summarize, when deciding between Tailwind CSS and UI component libraries like Material UI for web development, it really depends on your requirements. Tailwind provides styling classes and high customization, and it performs better because it ultimately is native CSS. On the other hand, component libraries provide pre-built UI components that speed up development but offer less customization and performance compared to Tailwind. You can use Tailwind with headless UI component libraries, which come without built-in styling, allowing for custom design systems. However, combining Tailwind with a fully styled library like Material UI might be redundant due to overlapping design systems.