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Customize Theme

By default, all Chakra components inherit values from the default theme. In some scenarios, you might need to customize the theme tokens to match your design requirements.

Here are some options depending on your goals:

  • Customize the theme tokens like colors, font sizes, line heights, etc.
  • Customize the component styles, changing the base styles, sizes, or variants.
  • Customize the global styles.

Customizing theme tokens​

To extend or override a token in the default theme, import the extendTheme function and add the keys you'd like to override. You can also add new values to the theme.

For example, if you'd like to update the colors in the theme to include your brand colors, here's what you'll do:

// 1. Import `extendTheme`
import { extendTheme } from "@chakra-ui/react"

// 2. Call `extendTheme` and pass your custom values
const theme = extendTheme({
  colors: {
    brand: {
      100: "#f7fafc",
      // ...
      900: "#1a202c",
    },
  },
})

// 3. Pass the new theme to `ChakraProvider`
<ChakraProvider theme={theme}>
  <App />
</ChakraProvider>

// 4. Now you can use these colors in your components
function Usage() {
  return <Box bg="brand.100">Welcome</Box>
}

You can also use the color for the colorScheme prop like this:

note

If you're curious as to what theme styles you can override, please reference the default theme foundation style files.

Customizing component styles​

Chakra has a specific approach or API for styling components. The main idea is most components have default or base styles (baseStyle), styles for different sizes (sizes), and styles for different visual variants (variants).

It is important to understand this so you can override any component style effectively.

tip

You're not limited to the component styles that Chakra provides, you can also create your own custom component styles. Learn more.

Customizing single components​

As we mentioned earlier, a component style consists of baseStyle, sizes, variants and an optional defaultProps to denote the default size, variant or colorScheme. Not every component has all three defaultProps, to figure out which prop can be set just have a short look on the theme source by using the View theme source button on the top of every components page.

Here's what the component style object looks like:

import { ComponentStyleConfig } from "@chakra-ui/react";

const ComponentStyle: ComponentStyleConfig = {
  // style object for base or default style
  baseStyle: {},
  // styles for different sizes ("sm", "md", "lg")
  sizes: {},
  // styles for different visual variants ("outline", "solid")
  variants: {},
  // default values for 'size', 'variant' and 'colorScheme'
  defaultProps: {
    size: "",
    variant: "",
    colorScheme: "",
  },
};

For example, let's override the component styles for Chakra's Button component.

theme.ts
import { extendTheme } from "@chakra-ui/react";
import type { StyleFunctionProps } from "@chakra-ui/styled-system";

const theme = extendTheme({
  components: {
    Button: {
      // 1. We can update the base styles
      baseStyle: {
        fontWeight: "bold", // Normally, it is "semibold"
      },
      // 2. We can add a new button size or extend existing
      sizes: {
        xl: {
          h: "56px",
          fontSize: "lg",
          px: "32px",
        },
      },
      // 3. We can add a new visual variant
      variants: {
        "with-shadow": {
          bg: "red.400",
          boxShadow: "0 0 2px 2px #efdfde",
        },
        // 4. We can override existing variants
        solid: (props: StyleFunctionProps) => ({
          bg: props.colorMode === "dark" ? "red.300" : "red.500",
        }),
        // 5. We can add responsive variants
        sm: {
          bg: "teal.500",
          fontSize: "md",
        },
      },
      // 6. We can overwrite defaultProps
      defaultProps: {
        size: "lg", // default is md
        variant: "sm", // default is solid
        colorScheme: "green", // default is gray
      },
    },
  },
});

export default theme;

That's it! When you use the Button from Chakra, these updates will be automatically applied.

note

When styling/overwriting the theme for a component be sure that it is really a single component with only one part, since you otherwise need to name the part that should be affected by your change when styling multipart components.

<Button size="xl" variant="with-shadow">
  Welcome
</Button>

If you're curious as to what component styles you can override, please reference the default component style files.

Customizing global styles​

Global styles are theme-aware styles you can apply to any html element globally.

To add global styles, update the theme.styles.global key in the theme. Global styles can be a style object or a function that returns a style object.

theme.ts
import { extendTheme } from "@chakra-ui/react";
import { mode } from "@chakra-ui/theme-tools";
import type { StyleFunctionProps } from "@chakra-ui/styled-system";

// Version 1: Using objects
const theme = extendTheme({
  styles: {
    global: {
      // styles for the `body`
      body: {
        bg: "gray.400",
        color: "white",
      },
      // styles for the `a`
      a: {
        color: "teal.500",
        _hover: {
          textDecoration: "underline",
        },
      },
    },
  },
});

// Version 2: Using functions
const overrides = extendTheme({
  styles: {
    global: (props: StyleFunctionProps) => ({
      body: {
        fontFamily: "body",
        color: mode("gray.800", "whiteAlpha.900")(props),
        bg: mode("white", "gray.800")(props),
        lineHeight: "base",
      },
    }),
  },
});

Responsive variants​

Responsive variants can be used to have different styles for components depending on the current active breakpoint. The properties in sizes of the component will be overwritten if passed in the responsive variant.

With responsive variants, prop override might not work as expected since we use regular CSS media queries. That's why we also came up with the notion of !important as an escape hatch.

To declare the responsive variants you can simply add them to the variants of the component:

const theme = extendTheme({
  components: {
    Button: {
      ...
      sizes: {
        sm: {
          fontSize: 'md'
        }
      },
      variants: {
        ...
        base: {
          bg: 'yellow.500',
          fontSize: 'md'
         },
        sm: {
          bg: 'teal.500',
          fontSize: 'lg'
         },
        md: {
          bg: 'orange.500',
          fontSize: 'xl'
         },
      }
    },
  },
});
note

Based on how the responsive variants are designed, there's no support for responsive colorScheme since it is technically not a variant.

Just pass them either with the Array syntax or the Object syntax to the component. The array syntax may not be work as expected, since it ignores the naming of the variant and uses them straight in the order on which they are passed into the array.

<>
  <Button variant={{ base: "base", md: "md" }}>Object syntax</Button>
  // the button will be orange after the `sm` breakpoint due to the array syntax
  <Button variant={["base", "md"]}>Array syntax</Button>
</>

It is required to use !important within a components style prop if this prop is set in the responsive variant as shown in the example below based on the theme above.

<>
  <Button variant={{ sm: "sm" }}>fontSize lg after breakpoint sm</Button>
  // without declaration of fontSize in the sm variant the fontSize would be lg as
  expected
  <Button variant={{ sm: "sm" }} fontSize="xl">
    still fontSize lg after breakpoint sm
  </Button>
  <Button variant={{ sm: "sm" }} fontSize="xl !important">
    fontSize xl due to the !important
  </Button>
</>

Combined usage with size in the theme is only possible by covering breakpoints below the responsive variant or by using !important, which overrides everything.

<Button size="sm" variant={{ md: "md" }}>
  fontSize md from 'sizes' until breakpoint md where the variant takes over
</Button>

Scaling out your project​

As your project grows in size, it is best to keep things organized. We highly suggest that instead of using a single theme.js (or theme.ts) file, you create a /theme folder in its place. Inside this folder, you could have a directory structure that looks like this:

📁 theme
  📄 index.js  # my main theme entrypoint
  📄 styles.js  # all my global style overrides
  📁 foundations
    📄 borders.js  # all my border overrides
  📁 components
    📄 button.js  # all my button overrides

This way, you can structure your main theme entrypoint file to be much cleaner, like this:

theme/index.js
import { extendTheme } from "@chakra-ui/react";

// Global style overrides
import styles from "./styles";

// Foundational style overrides
import borders from "./foundations/borders";

// Component style overrides
import Button from "./components/button";

const overrides = {
  styles,
  borders,
  // Other foundational style overrides go here
  components: {
    Button,
    // Other components go here
  },
};

export default extendTheme(overrides);

None of these is strictly required to use Chakra - but we've learned some hard lessons on the "right" way and the "wrong" way to write styles. The above is our best suggestion on how to write style overrides and organize your custom theme.

Using Theme extensions​

The extendTheme function allows you to pass multiple overrides or extensions:

import {
  extendTheme,
  withDefaultColorScheme,
  theme as baseTheme,
} from "@chakra-ui/react";

const customTheme = extendTheme(
  {
    colors: {
      brand: baseTheme.colors.red,
    },
    components: {
      Alert: {
        defaultProps: {
          colorScheme: "blue",
        },
      },
    },
  },
  withDefaultColorScheme({ colorScheme: "brand" })
);

The order of overrides is from left to right. E.g. the second extension overrides the first one, and so on.

note

Please note that you can pass a base theme as last parameter. If no base theme is provided, we use the Chakra UI default theme

extendTheme(
  withFirstExtension,
  withSecondExtension,
  withThirdExtension,
  optionalBaseTheme
);

Theme Extension: withDefaultColorScheme​

You can apply a default color scheme to all components.

import { extendTheme, withDefaultColorScheme } from "@chakra-ui/react";

const customTheme = extendTheme(withDefaultColorScheme({ colorScheme: "red" }));

Or pass the component names you want to apply a default colorScheme to. This lets you apply different color schemes to a group of components.

import { extendTheme, withDefaultColorScheme } from "@chakra-ui/react";

const customTheme = extendTheme(
  withDefaultColorScheme({
    colorScheme: "red",
    components: ["Button", "Badge"],
  }),
  withDefaultColorScheme({
    colorScheme: "blue",
    components: ["Alert", "Table"],
  })
);

Theme Extension: withDefaultSize​

You can apply a default size to all components.

import { extendTheme, withDefaultSize } from "@chakra-ui/react";

const customTheme = extendTheme(
  withDefaultSize({
    size: "lg",
    components: ["Button", "Badge"],
  })
);

Theme Extension: withDefaultVariant​

You can apply a default variant to all components.

import { extendTheme, withDefaultVariant } from "@chakra-ui/react";

const customTheme = extendTheme(
  withDefaultVariant({
    variant: "outline",
    components: ["Input", "NumberInput", "PinInput"],
  })
);

Theme Extension: withDefaultProps​

You can apply default props to all components.

import { extendTheme, withDefaultProps } from "@chakra-ui/react";

const customTheme = extendTheme(
  withDefaultProps({
    defaultProps: {
      variant: "outline",
      size: "lg",
    },
    components: ["Input", "NumberInput", "PinInput"],
  })
);

In the next section, we'll show some examples of how to create custom component styles and use them in your components!

Last updated on by Lazar Nikolov

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