Tailwind didn’t win CSS.
It just made developers stop thinking.
For the last few years, Tailwind has been sold as the “end of CSS problems.”
No naming. No structure debates. Just stack utilities and ship fast.
And it does work—at first.
But give it time.
Your HTML turns into a wall of
flex gap-2 px-4 py-2 bg-blue-500 rounded-md
Your components stop looking like components
and start looking like configuration files.
Your design system quietly disappears—
replaced by whatever utilities developers feel like typing.
And the worst part?
Everyone pretends this is fine because it’s “fast.”
“But it scales…”
No, it doesn’t. Not cleanly.
At scale, Tailwind creates:
- HTML that’s harder to read than actual CSS
- PRs where styling changes are invisible noise
- Components tightly coupled to implementation details
- A design system that exists only in people’s heads
And then teams start doing this:
.button {
@apply px-4 py-2 bg-blue-500 rounded-md;
}
Congratulations.
You just rebuilt CSS… on top of Tailwind.
Meanwhile, modern CSS quietly caught up
While everyone was arguing about Tailwind vs CSS-in-JS,
CSS itself evolved.
Now you have:
- Design tokens with CSS variables
- Real component responsiveness with container queries
-
Parent-based styling with
:has() - Native nesting
-
Predictable layering with
@layer
This isn’t “going back to CSS.”
This is moving forward with it.
The real shift
This isn’t Tailwind vs CSS.
It’s:
- Utility-first vs System-first
- Speed vs Structure
- Short-term productivity vs Long-term clarity
Where Tailwind actually fits
Tailwind is great when:
- You’re building fast
- You don’t have a system yet
- You don’t need one
But the moment your app grows…
You don’t need more utilities.
You need a design system.
And Tailwind doesn’t give you one.
It just gives you shortcuts.
So… is Tailwind still relevant?
Yes.
But not in the way people think.
Tailwind is not a destination.
It’s a phase.
And the best teams eventually move past it.
Final thought
Frontend doesn’t need another tool.
It needs developers who understand:
how to build systems—not just ship UI faster.
Modern CSS finally gives you the primitives to do that.
The only question is:
Are you choosing tools for speed…
or for the system you’ll have to maintain a year from now?
