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Typography

The theme provides a set of type sizes that work well together, and also with the layout grid.

Font family

You can change the font family with the theme.typography.fontFamily property.

For instance, this example uses the system font instead of the default Roboto font:

const theme = createTheme({
  typography: {
    fontFamily: [
      '-apple-system',
      'BlinkMacSystemFont',
      '"Segoe UI"',
      'Roboto',
      '"Helvetica Neue"',
      'Arial',
      'sans-serif',
      '"Apple Color Emoji"',
      '"Segoe UI Emoji"',
      '"Segoe UI Symbol"',
    ].join(','),
  },
});

Self-hosted fonts

To self-host fonts, download the font files in ttf, woff, and/or woff2 formats and import them into your code.

import RalewayWoff2 from './fonts/Raleway-Regular.woff2';

Next, you need to change the theme to use this new font. In order to globally define Raleway as a font face, the CssBaseline component can be used (or any other CSS solution of your choice).

import RalewayWoff2 from './fonts/Raleway-Regular.woff2';

const theme = createTheme({
  typography: {
    fontFamily: 'Raleway, Arial',
  },
  components: {
    MuiCssBaseline: {
      styleOverrides: `
        @font-face {
          font-family: 'Raleway';
          font-style: normal;
          font-display: swap;
          font-weight: 400;
          src: local('Raleway'), local('Raleway-Regular'), url(${RalewayWoff2}) format('woff2');
          unicodeRange: U+0000-00FF, U+0131, U+0152-0153, U+02BB-02BC, U+02C6, U+02DA, U+02DC, U+2000-206F, U+2074, U+20AC, U+2122, U+2191, U+2193, U+2212, U+2215, U+FEFF;
        }
      `,
    },
  },
});

// ...
return (
  <ThemeProvider theme={theme}>
    <CssBaseline />
    <Box sx={{ fontFamily: 'Raleway' }}>Raleway</Box>
  </ThemeProvider>
);

Note that if you want to add additional @font-face declarations, you need to use the string CSS template syntax for adding style overrides, so that the previously defined @font-face declarations won't be replaced.

Font size

Material UI uses rem units for the font size. The browser <html> element default font size is 16px, but browsers have an option to change this value, so rem units allow us to accommodate the user's settings, resulting in a better accessibility support. Users change font size settings for all kinds of reasons, from poor eyesight to choosing optimum settings for devices that can be vastly different in size and viewing distance.

To change the font-size of Material UI you can provide a fontSize property. The default value is 14px.

const theme = createTheme({
  typography: {
    // In Chinese and Japanese the characters are usually larger,
    // so a smaller fontsize may be appropriate.
    fontSize: 12,
  },
});

The computed font size by the browser follows this mathematical equation:

font size calculation
font size calculation

Responsive font sizes

The theme.typography.* variant properties map directly to the generated CSS. You can use media queries inside them:

const theme = createTheme();

theme.typography.h3 = {
  fontSize: '1.2rem',
  '@media (min-width:600px)': {
    fontSize: '1.5rem',
  },
  [theme.breakpoints.up('md')]: {
    fontSize: '2.4rem',
  },
};

Responsive h3

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To automate this setup, you can use the responsiveFontSizes() helper to make Typography font sizes in the theme responsive.

You can see this in action in the example below. Adjust your browser's window size, and notice how the font size changes as the width crosses the different breakpoints:

import { createTheme, responsiveFontSizes } from '@mui/material/styles';

let theme = createTheme();
theme = responsiveFontSizes(theme);

Responsive h3

Responsive h4

Responsive h5
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Fluid font sizes

To be done: #15251.

HTML font size

You might want to change the <html> element default font size. For instance, when using the 10px simplification.

The theme.typography.htmlFontSize property is provided for this use case, which tells Material UI what the font-size on the <html> element is. This is used to adjust the rem value so the calculated font-size always match the specification.

const theme = createTheme({
  typography: {
    // Tell Material UI what the font-size on the html element is.
    htmlFontSize: 10,
  },
});

html {
  font-size: 62.5%; /* 62.5% of 16px = 10px */
}

You need to apply the above CSS on the HTML element of this page to see the below demo rendered correctly.

body1

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Variants

The typography object comes with 13 variants by default:

  • h1
  • h2
  • h3
  • h4
  • h5
  • h6
  • subtitle1
  • subtitle2
  • body1
  • body2
  • button
  • caption
  • overline

Each of these variants can be customized individually:

const theme = createTheme({
  typography: {
    subtitle1: {
      fontSize: 12,
    },
    body1: {
      fontWeight: 500,
    },
    button: {
      fontStyle: 'italic',
    },
  },
});
subtitle

body1

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Adding & disabling variants

In addition to using the default typography variants, you can add custom ones, or disable any you don't need. Here is what you need to do:

Step 1. Update the theme's typography object

The code snippet below adds a custom variant to the theme called poster, and removes the default h3 variant:

const theme = createTheme({
  typography: {
    poster: {
      fontSize: '4rem',
      color: 'red',
    },
    // Disable h3 variant
    h3: undefined,
  },
});

Step 2. (Optional) Set the default semantic element for your new variant

At this point, you can already use the new poster variant, which will render a <span> by default with your custom styles. Sometimes you may want to default to a different HTML element for semantic purposes, or to replace the inline <span> with a block-level element for styling purposes.

To do this, update the variantMapping prop of the Typography component globally, at the theme level:

const theme = createTheme({
  typography: {
    poster: {
      fontSize: 64,
      color: 'red',
    },
    // Disable h3 variant
    h3: undefined,
  },
  components: {
    MuiTypography: {
      defaultProps: {
        variantMapping: {
          // Map the new variant to render a <h1> by default
          poster: 'h1',
        },
      },
    },
  },
});

Step 3. Update the necessary typings (if you are using TypeScript)

You need to make sure that the typings for the theme's typography variants and the Typography's variant prop reflects the new set of variants.

declare module '@mui/material/styles' {
  interface TypographyVariants {
    poster: React.CSSProperties;
  }

  // allow configuration using `createTheme`
  interface TypographyVariantsOptions {
    poster?: React.CSSProperties;
  }
}

// Update the Typography's variant prop options
declare module '@mui/material/Typography' {
  interface TypographyPropsVariantOverrides {
    poster: true;
    h3: false;
  }
}

Step 4. You can now use the new variant

poster

h3

<Typography variant="poster">poster</Typography>;

/* This variant is no longer supported. If you are using TypeScript it will give an error */
<Typography variant="h3">h3</Typography>;

Default values

You can explore the default values of the typography using the theme explorer or by opening the dev tools console on this page (window.theme.typography).