The sx Prop

The sx prop lets you style elements inline, using values from your theme. To use the sx prop, add the custom /** @jsxImportSource theme-ui */ pragma comment to the top of your module.

The sx prop lets you add any valid CSS to an element, while using values from your theme to keep styles consistent. You can think of the style object that the sx prop accepts as a superset of CSS.

/** @jsxImportSource theme-ui */
export default (props) => (
  <div
    {...props}
    sx={{
      // values referencing scales defined in a theme
      color: 'primary',
      bg: 'lightgray',
      fontFamily: 'body',
      // raw CSS value
      boxShadow: '0 0 1px 3px rgba(0, 0, 0, .125)',
    }}
  />
)

Theme-Aware Properties

The following CSS properties will use values defined in the theme, when available.

Theme UI also supports CSS Logical Properties, which follow this structure:

• margin-{block,inline}-{start,end}
• padding-{block,inline}-{start,end}
• border-{block,inline}-{start,end}-{width,style,color}
• inset-{block,inline}-{start,end}

Responsive Values

Theme UI, like Styled System, includes a shorthand syntax for writing mobile-first responsive styles using arrays as values. This is useful when you want to change a single property across multiple breakpoints without needing to write verbose media query syntax.

/** @jsxImportSource theme-ui */
export default (props) => (
  <div
    {...props}
    sx={{
      width: ['100%', '50%', '25%'],
    }}
  />
)

Skipping Breakpoints

If you want to skip a breakpoint, you can use the value null. This is useful if you want to set a value for only the largest breakpoint, for example.

/** @jsxImportSource theme-ui */
export default (props) => (
  <div
    {...props}
    sx={{
      width: [null, null, '25%'],
    }}
  />
)

Media Queries

If you prefer standard CSS media query syntax, you can use nested objects for responsive styles as well.

<div
  sx={{
    width: '100%',
    '@media screen and (min-width: 40em)': {
      width: '50%',
    },
  }}
/>

Margin and Padding

Margin and padding are treated as first-class citizens in Theme UI, using values defined in the theme.space scale, and include an optional shorthand syntax for using negative space in your application.

In addition to shorthands for applying margin and padding on the x- and y-axes, a terse naming convention can be used to quickly edit styles.

// example of using margin and padding shorthand syntax
<div
  sx={{
    px: 3, // padding-left & padding-right
    // paddingX: 3 will also work
    py: 4, // padding-top & padding-bottom
    mb: 3, // margin-bottom
  }}
/>

Functional Values

For shorthand CSS properties or ones that are not automatically mapped to values in the theme, use an inline function to reference values from the theme object.

/** @jsxImportSource theme-ui */
export default (props) => (
  <div
    {...props}
    sx={{
      boxShadow: (theme) => `0 0 4px ${theme.colors.primary}`,
    }}
  />
)

Child Selectors

In some cases you might want to apply styles to children of the current element. You can do so with Emotion's nested selectors.

/** @jsxImportSource theme-ui */
export default (props) => (
  <div
    {...props}
    sx={{
      h1: {
        backgroundColor: 'tomato',
        'a, span': {
          backgroundColor: 'white',
          color: 'tomato',
        },
      },
    }}
  />
)

If you want to reference the current class selector of the component, such as for psuedo-classes & psuedo-elements, you can use the & symbol.

/** @jsx jsx */
import { jsx } from 'theme-ui'
export default (props) => (
  <div
    {...props}
    sx={{
      '& > p': {
        fontSize: [2, 3, 4],
      },
      '&:hover': {
        color: 'accent',
      },
    }}
  />
)

Raw CSS

To opt-out of using theme-based CSS, use the css prop to render raw CSS values.

/** @jsxImportSource theme-ui */
export default (props) => (
  <div
    {...props}
    css={{
      // raw values
      color: 'tomato',
      fontSize: 24,
    }}
  />
)

Using the sx Prop in MDX

Because MDX uses its own custom pragma and createElement function, the Theme UI pragma will not work in MDX files. You can use any of the Theme UI components, which support the sx prop, in an MDX file as a workaround.

import { Box } from 'theme-ui'
<Box
  sx={{
    padding: 3,
    bg: 'highlight',
  }}
>
# Hello
</Box>

Object Styles

If you're new to using JavaScript object notation for authoring styles, see the guide to using objects for styling.