Discuss: Would you have one style sheet for all or make a style sheet for each page when making a basic website?

I’d probably use just one style sheet for a basic website. Incentivizes consistently and re-use.

Depends on a website.
To avoid a layout shift when page loads and the styles kick in I prefer to have crucial styles in the head and the rest in css file(s).

But if all pages are very different from one another it doesn't really make sense to group them together. And if the styles are really short, it doesn't make sense to separate them to a file.

Nowadays I'd start with everything in <style> and extract when it gets too crowded

A good way to split up the css files in a crucial css file and a page specific css file.

The crucial file is the easiest file. It contains css that is used on every page.
Most of the times specific content of the pages are build up with components. So you can split up css files in components and generate css files with all the components combinations there are.
Once a page is created or changed, there needs to be a component check to link to the css file with the right component combination.

One sheet for layout and page specific sheets for page specific styles

For my personal website, all of the css common across all pages or most pages is in a single css file, which my custom static site generator then embeds directly in the head of each page. The css file itself is just so I have a single place to edit it, and my site generator takes care of updating on all pages. For the couple pages on my site that need additional page-specific styling, I also just embed in head. Site is at cicirello.org if you want to see complexity of site that I handle this way.

For all of my project sites, I use AMP HTML, which doesn't allow external style sheets, so the css for those sites is also emdedded in the head. One of these sites is at actions.cicirello.org. I currently edit this site by hand so modifying style is tedious and potentially error-prone. I actually just made a couple css changes the other day--had to make same changes to each page (luckily just 5 at the moment).

Good question! I mostly only use a single CSS file for the entire website, but I also write a different CSS file for mobile devices. Although I'm no expert in CSS, I think having everything in a single file makes navigation way easier.

I have adopted a style where I use 3 style sheets. A main style sheet that applies to all devices. Then a style for portrait orientation and one for landscape orientation. When I link the style sheets in the head I use media queries so only the necessary style sheet loads depending on the screen orientation. So like <link rel="stylesheet" href="styles/landscape.css" media="(orientation:landscape)">. This way not all the css is downloaded unless it is needed. So if a person views the website on a laptop then the portrait.css will not he downloaded etc. It gives a slight performance boost.

We've thought about this for years. At Thought Might, finally we've come up to a decision that using a single file will be beneficial. Because browser will have to download the css file once no matter how many pages users browse.

The main target should be keeping the css file short.

Here's how I usually organize my stylesheets:

• global : has all definitions for components I'd prolly use all throughout the site, that is typography, colors, sizings, etc.
• responsive : here's where I write all of my media queries. Mind that in this setup, good documentation is a must since you may be compiling styles for different pages.
• page-specific : there are some styles that I just can't put inside global. Here's where "overriding" usually happens. Say, I have a card component on global which has narrow spacings and I want some cards in certain pages to have more padding.

In my experience, a single stylesheet is sufficient for an entire basic website. This facilitates graphical consistency and maintenance.