The Modern CSS Reset: What's in It and Why It Works

Why normalize.css is showing its age, what a modern CSS reset actually includes, and the exact reset used by top design systems in 2025. Copy-paste ready.

Every project starts with a reset. But most developers are still copying a reset from 2014. Browser defaults have changed. User expectations have changed. Your reset should too.

normalize.css was written when browsers were genuinely inconsistent in ways that mattered. IE 8 and 9 needed a lot of help. Those browsers are gone. Most of what normalize.css does today is redundant — browsers have converged significantly.

The new problems are different: box model confusion, line-height inconsistencies, unexpected overflow, form element inheritance, focus styles that disappear.

/* Modern CSS Reset — CSSToolBox */
*, *::before, *::after {
  box-sizing: border-box;
}

* {
  margin: 0;
}

html {
  hanging-punctuation: first last;
  color-scheme: light dark;
}

body {
  min-height: 100dvh;
  line-height: 1.5;
  -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
}

img, video, canvas, svg, picture {
  display: block;
  max-width: 100%;
}

input, button, textarea, select {
  font: inherit;
}

p, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
  overflow-wrap: break-word;
}

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
  text-wrap: balance;
}

p {
  text-wrap: pretty;
}

#root, #__next {
  isolation: isolate;
}

• box-sizing: border-box — padding and border are included in width/height. Essential. Should have been the default.
• margin: 0 on * — removes all default margins. Add spacing intentionally.
• min-height: 100dvh — uses dynamic viewport height (avoids iOS Safari address bar issues).
• -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased — better font rendering on macOS.
• font: inherit on form elements — stops inputs rendering in the browser default font.
• text-wrap: balance on headings — prevents orphaned single words on their own line.
• text-wrap: pretty on paragraphs — similar, but optimised for longer text blocks.
• isolation: isolate on root — creates a stacking context that prevents z-index bleed.