Tailwind Isn't Always the Answer

Conflicting Styles: Tailwind's aggressive reset (Preflight) can clash with existing global styles, leading to unexpected visual regressions and endless specificity battles.
Maintaining Two Systems: You'll likely end up with a hybrid codebase, where new components use Tailwind and old ones use the legacy system. This doubles the mental overhead for developers and makes consistent styling a nightmare.
Migration Costs: A full migration to Tailwind is a major undertaking, often more complex and costly than a complete rewrite. If the existing CSS isn't broken, the benefits of migrating rarely outweigh the disruption and expense, especially for an SME owner or startup founder with limited resources.

When to Steer Clear of Tailwind CSS

Tailwind CSS, despite its popularity, isn't a silver bullet. You should generally avoid it for extremely small, static sites where a few lines of custom CSS suffice, when integrating into a sprawling legacy codebase already using another framework, or if your development team is heavily reliant on traditional CSS methodologies without a willingness to adapt.

Is Your Project a Trivial Pursuit?

Building a one-page landing site for a quick campaign, a simple static portfolio, or a personal blog with minimal styling needs? Reaching for Tailwind might be akin to bringing a chainsaw to prune a bonsai. The setup, even with its streamlined CLI or PostCSS integration, still adds overhead. For a project that requires only half a dozen CSS rules, including a 40KB+ utility framework and managing its build process is often overkill.

Tiny Static Sites: A simple `