Getting started with Pigment CSS

Learn how to get started customizing your components using Pigment CSS.

Pigment CSS is a zero-runtime CSS-in-JS library that pre-compiles at build time, making it compatible with React Server Components and providing you with significant performance improvements over other styling engines.

Pigment CSS is compatible with any React component library and can be used with Vite and Next.js.

Check out the Migrating to Pigment CSS guide if you have an existing Material UI project.

Prerequisites

• Node.js
• A package manager
• A Next.js or Vite project

You can fast track your Pigment CSS installation and project creation with the following commands:

Manual installation

To get started on an existing project, install Pigment CSS with the following command:

Next, head over to your config file and import the withPigment plugin:

Finally, import the Pigment CSS stylesheet in your layout.tsx (Next.js) or main.tsx (Vite) file:

import '@pigment-css/react/styles.css';

Usage

Pigment CSS addresses the needs of modern React development: it's compatible with React Server Components and lets you reap the benefits of CSS-in-JS—all without runtime performance costs.

With Pigment CSS, you can create locally scoped reusable styles, themes, CSS variables, and more.

Styling

Pigment CSS simplifies the creation and definition of styles through various APIs:

• css: for reusable styles
• globalCss: for global styles
• keyframes: for reusable animation keyframes
• styled: for styled components

Creating reusable styles

Use the css API to create reusable styles:

import { css } from '@pigment-css/react';

You can do this with either template or object syntax:

Template syntax

const bodyBackground = css`
  background-color: #000;
  color: #fff;
`;

Object syntax

const mainClass = css({
  display: '#000',
  color: '#fff',
});

Creating global styles

Use the globalCss API to define global styles to load across an entire app.

You should define these at the top level of your JavaScript file:

import { globalCss } from '@pigment-css/react';

globalCss`
  body {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
  }
`;

Creating styled components

Keeping styles scoped to components ensures that only the necessary CSS is loaded and leads to better modularity, readability, and maintainability. You can apply conditional styling to your components based on props or runtime values.

Use the styled API to create styled components:

import { styled } from '@pigment-css/react';

const Heading = styled('div')({
  fontSize: '2rem',
  color: '#9FADBC',
  fontWeight: 'bold',
  margin: '1rem',
});

Styling based on props

Use the variants key to define different styling options based on props. This approach is recommended when the value of the prop is known at build time.

Each of the variants is an object with props and style keys:

import { styled } from '@pigment-css/react';

const Heading = styled('div')({
  fontSize: '2rem',
  color: '#9FADBC',
  fontWeight: 'bold',
  margin: '1rem',
  variants: [
    {
      props: { variant: 'success' },
      style: { color: '#23AD79' },
    },
    {
      props: { size: 'small' },
      style: { fontSize: '1.5rem' },
    },
  ],
});

Styling based on runtime values

When the value of a prop is unknown ahead of time, you can style your components based on runtime values:

const Heading = styled('h1')({
  color: ({ isError }) => (isError ? 'red' : 'black'),
});

Themes

Pigment CSS supports theming to apply consistent styles and values across your application. You can create themes by defining them in your config file:

import { withPigment } from '@pigment-css/nextjs-plugin';

export default withPigment(nextConfig, {
  theme: {
    colors: {
      primary: 'tomato',
      secondary: 'cyan',
    },
    spacing: {
      unit: 8,
    },
    typography: {
      fontFamily: 'Inter, sans-serif',
    },
    // ...more keys and values, it's free style!
  },
});

To access your themes, use a callback with the styled() and css() APIs:

const Heading = styled('h1')(({ theme }) => ({
  color: theme.colors.primary,
  fontSize: theme.spacing.unit * 4,
  fontFamily: theme.typography.fontFamily,
}));

CSS variables support

Pigment CSS generates CSS variables from the theme values when they're wrapped by the extendTheme utility, creating a vars object:

import { withPigment, extendTheme } from '@pigment-css/nextjs-plugin';

export default withPigment(nextConfig, {
  theme: extendTheme({
    colors: {
      primary: 'tomato',
      secondary: 'cyan',
    },
    spacing: {
      unit: 8,
    },
    typography: {
      fontFamily: 'Inter, sans-serif',
    },
  }),
});

Color schemes

You can use the colorSchemes key within the extendTheme utility to assign different values based on different conditions, such as switching between dark mode and light mode:

extendTheme({
  colorSchemes: {
    light: {
      colors: {
        background: '#f9f9f9',
        foreground: '#121212',
      },
    },
    dark: {
      colors: {
        background: '#212121',
        foreground: '#fff',
      },
    },
  },
});

Pigment CSS uses the prefers-color-scheme media query by default to switch between color schemes:

const colorScheme = css`
  background-color: ${({ theme }) => theme.colorSchemes.dark.colors.background};
  color: ${({ theme }) => theme.colorSchemes.dark.colors.foreground};

  @media (prefers-color-scheme: light) {
    background-color: ${({ theme }) => theme.colorSchemes.light.colors.background};
    color: ${({ theme }) => theme.colorSchemes.light.colors.foreground};
  }
`;

You can also customize the behavior by providing a getSelector function:

 extendTheme({
   colorSchemes: {
     light: { ... },
     dark: { ... },
   },
+  getSelector: (colorScheme) => colorScheme ? `.theme-${colorScheme}` : ':root',
 });

The sx prop

Pigment CSS includes the sx prop which lets you provide one-off inline custom styles to any element.

At build time, Pigment CSS replaces the sx prop with className and style props. The sx prop works with all Material UI components as well as HTML elements and any third-party JSX components.

<div sx={{ display: 'flex', flexDirection: 'column' }}>

<AnyComponent sx={{ fontSize: 12, color: 'red' }} />;

If you use the sx prop on an HTML element, you'll need to augment the HTMLAttributes interface:

type Theme = {
  // your theme type
};

declare global {
  namespace React {
    interface HTMLAttributes<T> {
      sx?:
        | React.CSSProperties
        | ((theme: Theme) => React.CSSProperties)
        | ReadonlyArray<
            React.CSSProperties | ((theme: Theme) => React.CSSProperties)
          >;
    }
  }
}