my journey with custom css and utility styling
reflections on hand-written CSS, utility frameworks, and finding the sweet spot for maintainable frontend styling.
- published
- apr 2026
- reading time
- 7 min
cover
writing custom CSS feels liberating at first, until maintenance gets complex and class names start overlapping across components.
utility styling solved naming friction for me and made deleting unused code effortless during refactors.
the balance i landed on: semantic design tokens for core theme colors, and utility classes for fast layout composition.