Features
- Full Material Design 3 implementation
- Comprehensive theming with createTheme
- Unstyled Base UI components for custom designs
- MUI X for advanced data grid, date pickers, charts
- CSS-in-JS with Emotion or styled-components
Pros
- Most popular React component library by downloads
- Extensive documentation and examples
- Strong theming and customization capabilities
- Advanced commercial components (MUI X)
Cons
- Runtime CSS-in-JS performance overhead
- Material Design look requires effort to override
- Bundle size can be significant
Overview
Material UI (MUI) is the most widely used React component library, implementing Google’s Material Design system. It provides a comprehensive set of pre-built components that follow Material Design guidelines, along with a powerful theming system that lets you customize every aspect of the design.
MUI offers multiple product lines: Material UI for Material Design components, Joy UI for a custom design system, Base UI for unstyled headless components, and MUI X for advanced commercial components like data grids, date pickers, and charts. The theming system uses CSS-in-JS (Emotion by default) with a createTheme API for deep customization.
When to Use
Material UI is suitable for applications that want Material Design out of the box, when you need a proven component library with extensive documentation, or when you need advanced data components (MUI X). Consider alternatives if Material Design’s visual language doesn’t match your brand.
Getting Started
npm install @mui/material @emotion/react @emotion/styledimport { Button, Stack, Typography } from "@mui/material";
function App() {
return (
<Stack spacing={2} sx={{ p: 4 }}>
<Typography variant="h4">Hello, Material UI!</Typography>
<Stack direction="row" spacing={2}>
<Button variant="contained">Contained</Button>
<Button variant="outlined">Outlined</Button>
</Stack>
</Stack>
);
}