Use Restyle to Create a Design System in React Native (2025)

Building Type-Safe Design Systems with Restyle

Shopify's Restyle library provides a powerful, type-safe approach to building design systems in React Native. Unlike traditional styling approaches, Restyle offers compile-time type checking, theme integration, and consistent styling patterns that scale across large applications.

This comprehensive guide demonstrates how to create a production-ready design system using Restyle, covering themes, core primitives, components, dark mode support, and responsive variants.

Why Choose Restyle?

• Type Safety - Full TypeScript support with compile-time checking
• Themeable - Built-in theme system with easy switching
• Consistent API - Unified styling approach across all components
• Performance - Optimized for React Native performance

Creating Your Theme

The foundation of any Restyle design system is a well-structured theme. Define your colors, spacing, typography, and other design tokens in a centralized theme object that can be easily maintained and updated.

// theme.ts
import { createTheme } from '@shopify/restyle';

const theme = createTheme({
  colors: {
    primary: '#007AFF',
    secondary: '#5856D6',
    background: '#FFFFFF',
    text: '#000000',
  },
  spacing: {
    s: 8,
    m: 16,
    l: 24,
    xl: 40,
  },
  breakpoints: {
    phone: 0,
    tablet: 768,
  },
});

export type Theme = typeof theme;
export default theme;

Core Primitives: Box and Text

Restyle's Box and Text components serve as the building blocks for all other components. These primitives provide a consistent API for styling while maintaining type safety.

// primitives.tsx
import { createBox, createText } from '@shopify/restyle';
import { Theme } from './theme';

export const Box = createBox<Theme>();
export const Text = createText<Theme>();

// Usage
<Box padding="m" backgroundColor="primary">
  <Text variant="header" color="background">
    Hello Restyle!
  </Text>
</Box>

Building Reusable Components

With your theme and primitives in place, you can build a library of reusable components that automatically respect your design system and theme.

Dark Mode Support

Restyle makes implementing dark mode straightforward by allowing you to define multiple theme variants and switch between them seamlessly. Learn how to structure your themes for optimal dark mode support.

Responsive Variants

Create responsive layouts that adapt to different screen sizes using Restyle's breakpoint system. This ensures your design system works perfectly across phones, tablets, and other devices.

Build Better Mobile Apps

For Developers: AI Mobile Launcher includes a complete design system with Restyle integration, dark mode support, and beautiful UI components out of the box.

For Founders: Need a mobile app with a polished design system? Contact CasaInnov for professional development.