Sass

Customize Material Style with Sass, Harness the power of variables, maps, mixins, and functions.

File structure

Whenever possible, avoid modifying Material Style’s core files. For Sass, that means creating your own stylesheet that imports Material Style so you can modify and extend it. Assuming you’re using a package manager like npm, you’ll have a file structure that looks like this:

your-project/
├── scss
│   └── custom.scss
└── node_modules/
    └── @materialstyle
        └── materialstyle
            ├── js
            └── scss

Importing

In your custom.scss, you’ll import Material Style’s source Sass files. You have two options: include all of Material Style, or pick the parts you need. We encourage the latter, though be aware there are some requirements and dependencies across our components. You also will need to include some JavaScript for our plugins.

Include all of Material Style

// Custom.scss

// Include any default variable overrides here (though functions won't be available)

@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/materialstyle";

// Then add additional custom code here

Include parts of Material Style

// Custom.scss

// 1. Include functions first (so you can manipulate colors, SVGs, calc, etc)
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/functions";

// 2. Include any default variable overrides here

// 3. Include variables (including any separate color mode stylesheets)
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/variables";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/variables-dark";

// 4. Include any default map overrides here

// 5. Include remainder of required parts
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/maps";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/mixins";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/root";

// 6. Optionally include any other parts as needed
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/utilities";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/reboot";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/type";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/images";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/containers";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/grid";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/helpers";

// 7. Optionally include utilities API last to generate classes based on the Sass map in `_utilities.scss`
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/utilities/api";

// 8. Add additional custom code here

With that setup in place, you can begin to modify any of the Sass variables and maps in your custom.scss. You can also start to add parts of Material Style under the // Optional section as needed. We suggest using the full import stack from our materialstyle.scss file as your starting point.

Variable defaults

Every Sass variable in Material Style includes the !default flag allowing you to override the variable’s default value in your own Sass without modifying Material Style’s source code. Copy and paste variables as needed, modify their values, and remove the !default flag. If a variable has already been assigned, then it won’t be re-assigned by the default values in Material Style.

You will find the complete list of Material Style’s variables in scss/_variables.scss. Some variables are set to null, these variables don’t output the property unless they are overridden in your configuration.

Variable overrides must come after our functions are imported, but before the rest of the imports.

Here’s an example that changes the background-color and color for the <body> when importing and compiling Material Style via npm:

// Required
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/functions";

// Default variable overrides
$body-bg: #000;
$body-color: #111;

// Required
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/variables";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/variables-dark";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/maps";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/mixins";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/root";

// Optional components here
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/reboot";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/type";
// etc
Head over to our Material Style Examples repository for examples on Webpack, Parcel & Vite.

Maps and loops

Material Style includes a handful of Sass maps, key value pairs that make it easier to generate families of related CSS. We use Sass maps for our colors, grid breakpoints, and more. Just like Sass variables, all Sass maps include the !default flag and can be overridden and extended.

Some of our Sass maps are merged into empty ones by default. This is done to allow easy expansion of a given Sass map, but comes at the cost of making removing items from a map slightly more difficult.

Modify map

All variables in the $theme-colors map are defined as standalone variables. To modify an existing color in our $theme-colors map, add the following to your custom Sass file:

$primary: #6e00c1;
$danger: #ff4136;

Later on, these variables are set in Material Style’s $theme-colors map:

$theme-colors: (
  "primary": $primary,
  "danger": $danger
);

Add to map

Add new colors to $theme-colors, or any other map, by creating a new Sass map with your custom values and merging it with the original map. In this case, we’ll create a new $custom-colors map and merge it with $theme-colors.

// Create your own map
$custom-colors: (
  "custom-color": #900
);

// Merge the maps
$theme-colors: map-merge($theme-colors, $custom-colors);

Remove from map

To remove colors from $theme-colors, or any other map, use map-remove. Be aware you must insert $theme-colors between our requirements just after its definition in variables and before its usage in maps:

// Required
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/functions";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/variables";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/variables-dark";

$theme-colors: map-remove($theme-colors, "info", "light", "dark");

@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/maps";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/mixins";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/root";

// Optional
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/reboot";
@import "../node_modules/@materialstyle/materialstyle/scss/type";
// etc

Required keys

Material Style assumes the presence of some specific keys within Sass maps as we used and extend these ourselves. As you customize the included maps, you may encounter errors where a specific Sass map’s key is being used.

For example, we use the primary, success, and danger keys from $theme-colors for links, buttons, and form states. Replacing the values of these keys should present no issues, but removing them may cause Sass compilation issues. In these instances, you’ll need to modify the Sass code that makes use of those values.

Functions

Colors

You can lighten or darken colors with Material Styles’s tint-color() and shade-color() functions. These functions will mix colors with black or white, unlike Sass’ native lighten() and darken() functions which will change the lightness by a fixed amount, which often doesn’t lead to the desired effect.

scss/_functions.scss 
// Tint a color: mix a color with white
@function tint-color($color, $weight) {
  @return mix(white, $color, $weight);
}

// Shade a color: mix a color with black
@function shade-color($color, $weight) {
  @return mix(black, $color, $weight);
}

// Shade the color if the weight is positive, else tint it
@function shift-color($color, $weight) {
  @return if($weight > 0, shade-color($color, $weight), tint-color($color, -$weight));
}

In practice, you’d call the function and pass in the color and weight parameters.

.custom-element {
  color: tint-color($primary, 10%);
}

.custom-element-2 {
  color: shade-color($danger, 30%);
}

Color contrast

In order to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) contrast requirements, authors must provide a minimum text color contrast of 4.5:1 and a minimum non-text color contrast of 3:1, with very few exceptions.

To help with this, we included the color-contrast function in Material Style. It uses the WCAG contrast ratio algorithm for calculating contrast thresholds based on relative luminance in an sRGB color space to automatically return a light (#fff), dark (#212529) or black (#000) contrast color based on the specified base color. This function is especially useful for mixins or loops where you’re generating multiple classes.

For example, to generate color swatches from our $theme-colors map:

@each $color, $value in $theme-colors {
  .swatch-#{$color} {
    color: color-contrast($value);
  }
}

It can also be used for one-off contrast needs:

.custom-element {
  color: color-contrast(#000); // returns `color: #fff`
}

You can also specify a base color with our color map functions:

.custom-element {
  color: color-contrast($dark); // returns `color: #fff`
}

Escape SVG

We use the escape-svg function to escape the <, > and # characters for SVG background images. When using the escape-svg function, data URIs must be quoted.

Add and Subtract functions

We use the add and subtract functions to wrap the CSS calc function. The primary purpose of these functions is to avoid errors when a “unitless” 0 value is passed into a calc expression. Expressions like calc(10px - 0) will return an error in all browsers, despite being mathematically correct.

Example where the calc is valid:

$border-radius: .25rem;
$border-width: 1px;

.element {
  // Output calc(.25rem - 1px) is valid
  border-radius: calc($border-radius - $border-width);
}

.element {
  // Output the same calc(.25rem - 1px) as above
  border-radius: subtract($border-radius, $border-width);
}

Example where the calc is invalid:

$border-radius: .25rem;
$border-width: 0;

.element {
  // Output calc(.25rem - 0) is invalid
  border-radius: calc($border-radius - $border-width);
}

.element {
  // Output .25rem
  border-radius: subtract($border-radius, $border-width);
}

Mixins

Our scss/mixins/ directory has a ton of mixins that power parts of Material Style and can also be used across your own project.

Color schemes

A shorthand mixin for the prefers-color-scheme media query is available with support for light, dark, and custom color schemes. See the color modes documentation for information on our color mode mixin.

scss/mixins/_color-scheme.scss 
@mixin color-scheme($name) {
  @media (prefers-color-scheme: #{$name}) {
    @content;
  }
}


.custom-element {
  @include color-scheme(dark) {
    // Insert dark mode styles here
  }

  @include color-scheme(custom-named-scheme) {
    // Insert custom color scheme styles here
  }
}
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