Responsive design has become a cornerstone of modern web development, ensuring users get a seamless experience across all devices. As a web designer working with Angular, I’ve found SCSS grid techniques to be invaluable for creating flexible, adaptive layouts that play well with Material Design concepts. In this article, I’ll guide you through crafting responsive layouts in Angular using SCSS, with a focus on practical grid patterns and tips for maintainability.

Why SCSS Grids?

While CSS Grid and Flexbox offer powerful layout capabilities directly in CSS, using SCSS to encapsulate and extend these features provides:

• Reusable mixins and variables for consistency
• Cleaner, DRY code across components
• Custom breakpoints tailored to your application’s design system

Setting Up the Basics

First, make sure your Angular project is configured to use SCSS. (When generating a new Angular project, use ng new my-project --style=scss).

Create a _grid.scss partial to house your grid logic. Example:

// _grid.scss
$grid-columns: 12;
$gutter-width: 16px;

@mixin grid-container {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: repeat($grid-columns, 1fr);
  gap: $gutter-width;
}

@mixin grid-item($span: 1) {
  grid-column: span $span;
}

Import your grid partial in your main styles or component SCSS files:

@import 'grid';

Building a Responsive Angular Component

Suppose you have a Material card component and want to lay out several cards responsively:

// card-list.component.scss
.card-list {
  @include grid-container;
  @media (max-width: 768px) {
    grid-template-columns: 1fr;
  }
}

.card-list-item {
  @include grid-item(4); // Span 4 columns on desktop
  @media (max-width: 1024px) {
    @include grid-item(6); // Span 6 on tablet
  }
  @media (max-width: 768px) {
    @include grid-item(12); // Full width on mobile
  }
}

Integrating with Angular & Material

Pairing this layout method with Angular Material’s components (like mat-card) gives you structured UI plus branding consistency. Structure your template:

<div class="card-list">
  <mat-card class="card-list-item" *ngFor="let item of items">
    {{ item.title }}
  </mat-card>
</div>

Pro Tips

• Define breakpoint variables in SCSS for maintainability.
• Use grid layouts for dashboard UIs, content feeds, and admin panels.
• Combine grid and flex layouts for complex interfaces.
• Rely on SCSS @mixin and @include for consistent, scalable code.

Wrapping Up

SCSS grids offer Angular developers a toolkit for building clean, responsive layouts that complement Material Design’s structured, modular aesthetic. Mixins, variables, and partials not only keep your code DRY—they also make adapting your app’s layout down the road a breeze.

Try out these patterns in your next project and see how smooth responsive design can be!

Happy styling,

Maddie