How to Link Multiple CSS Stylesheets in HTML

Robert Cooper

Full Stack Developer

This post shows you how to link multiple CSS stylesheets in HTML.

Understanding the link tag

You use the <link> tag within the <head> section of your HTML file to link a CSS stylesheet. This tag includes several attributes, with rel, href, and type being the most crucial for our purposes.

The rel attribute specifies the relationship between the document and the linked document. For CSS files, set this to "stylesheet".
The href attribute defines the path to the CSS file.
The type attribute indicates the MIME type of the linked document, which is "text/css" for CSS files.

Here's how to link a single CSS file:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" type="text/css">

How to link multiple CSS files?

Repeat the <link> tag for each stylesheet you want to link, making sure the href attribute points to the correct file path. The order of these links matters because it determines the precedence of styles, especially if there are conflicts.

<head>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="reset.css" type="text/css">
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="layout.css" type="text/css">
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="theme.css" type="text/css">
</head>

For instance, by linking reset.css first, you normalize default styling across browsers before adding structural styles with layout.css and visual elements with theme.css. The cascading nature of CSS ensures that later styles can override earlier ones if necessary.

Stuff to consider

Although dividing your CSS into multiple files will improve the development process, it can impact your website's performance because of the additional HTTP requests it generates. To minimize this, you should:

Use @import statements within CSS files judiciously, as they can cause downloads to occur sequentially, further impacting load times.
Consider using CSS preprocessors like Sass or Less. They let you organize your styles in multiple files during development, which you can then compile into a single CSS file for production, reducing HTTP requests.
Optimize your CSS delivery by combining and minifying CSS files for production. This reduces the number of requests and the size of the files being downloaded.

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