Exploring Bootstrap: the ins and outs of customizing styles

How can one determine which bootstrap styles need to be overridden when customizing the appearance?

Is there a trick to identifying where to set styles in order for them to take precedence over bootstrap styles?

For instance, I've been struggling for two days to achieve the desired look for form fields. The default bootstrap styling produces tall fields with rounded edges when wrapped in form-group row and form-control layers. Despite creating my own class with zero padding and margin settings and a height of 18px, nothing seems to work.

I previously had the appearance almost perfect using only HTML and CSS without any bootstrap elements. However, the lead developer insisted on utilizing bootstrap styles and tweaking as needed to match the desired aesthetic. That's certainly easier said than done.


I long for the simpler days when a designer provided the style specifications and we just implemented them without all this extra effort. Relying on a library like bootstrap for most of the solution but putting in extra effort for the remaining 20% doesn't seem like an ideal approach unless it's purely about maximizing client investment.

Answer №1

Avoid altering Bootstrap styles directly.

Instead of modifying the Bootstrap SCSS files, create your own CSS file to override the styles according to your needs. This will prevent potential issues in the future, especially when sharing or updating to a new version of Bootstrap. Mixing files or having to redo your customizations can be a time-consuming task.

'Making direct changes to the default bootstrap.css stylesheet can lead to difficulties in tracking and maintaining those changes over time.'

Learn How to Customize Bootstrap on UX Planet

Answer №2

Avoid making changes directly to the original bootstrap file if you are adding it manually to your project.

Create a separate stylesheet for your modifications and remember to include it after the bootstrap import.

Answer №3

To accomplish this task, there are a couple of methods you can use.

1) Customize Bootstrap SCSS to suit your requirements. By doing so, you have the ability to quickly make changes and generate custom CSS instead of simply overriding existing styles. This is generally considered the most straightforward approach.

2) Override default styling with your own custom CSS. This process becomes easier if you understand how Bootstrap works and the specific styles applied to each element. Simply access the Bootstrap CSS file, locate what needs modification, and override it accordingly. Keep in mind that dealing with Bootstrap's usage of !important can be challenging at times. Lastly, remember to place your custom CSS after the Bootstrap stylesheet!

Answer №4

It seems to me that the issue at hand (or something I wasn't aware of) is that Bootstrap's default settings include padding, margins, and other values greater than 0. Therefore, whenever I use a Bootstrap tag, I have to override these values and set them to 0 in order to achieve the layout desired by the client.

When I say "override," I don't mean editing the actual Bootstrap CSS file, but rather specifying in my own CSS file the styles from Bootstrap that I am overriding.

Thank you all for sharing your links and suggestions. I truly appreciate it.

Here are some helpful tips on using debugging tools: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspector/How_to/Examine_and_edit_CSS

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