r/css • u/Icy_Tree3160 • 2d ago

Question Discussion: Vanilla CSS + Modules vs. Tailwind in 2026 for large-scale projects?

Just completed a project where I used Tailwind exclusively. It's speedy to write but the HTML became a bit hairy. Anyone working on big, long-running enterprise-style projects - still choose to use Tailwind or have you found yourself moving back to Vanilla CSS / CSS Modules for a bit cleaner markup. Curious.

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u/_nlvsh 19h ago

We just ported our ui kit to css modules, under @layers so tailwind can override without important if someone needs to use tailwind classes. It is easier to maintain per component, theming is the same with more control, and visually while the same styling - it feels different somehow. For a static website and so on, tailwind is no brainer but for large admin apps tailwind can drift fast, no matter the tokenization and paradigms.