Mastering Webflow Basics

Class management in Webflow is one of the most important concepts to understand if you're planning to build or maintain your own site. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most common areas where clients get tripped up. In this walkthrough, we’ll cover the core ideas of how classes work in Webflow and why getting a handle on them will save you from a lot of styling headaches.

Webflow is a professional tool, but it shouldn’t be out of reach for non-developers. You shouldn’t need to ping your developer every time you want to add a button or build a new section. But to do that confidently, you need to know what classes do, how they behave, and how to structure them well.

Let’s start with a blank Webflow project. The first thing you'll notice when adding a few elements (like buttons, headings, or paragraphs) is that they all stack in the top left corner. This isn’t a bug—it’s how the browser naturally renders content, much like how a word processor starts from the top-left and flows down as you type.

So how do we take control of the layout and visual styling? With classes.

Understanding Parent and Child Elements

One of Webflow’s most powerful tools is the div block. It’s an invisible container that you can use to group elements and apply styles. You can think of it like a folder for your elements. By styling the parent div, you impact all the elements inside it without touching them individually. For example, if you add padding or a background color to a div, it affects everything within it.

You can nest div blocks inside of each other to build structured sections. So instead of naming something "div block 4," rename it to something meaningful like section_header. The name alone doesn’t apply any styles—but once you start layering utility classes on top, that’s where the power comes in.

Utility Classes and Combo Classes

Let’s say we want to center our content and keep it from touching the edges of the browser. We might create a container_large class that does exactly that. This container has a max width, auto side margins, and maybe some horizontal padding. That way, no matter how wide your browser gets, your content stays neatly centered.

Then we might want to add vertical spacing. Rather than applying padding directly to the container (which muddies its job), we wrap it in another div with a class like padding_vertical_large to give top and bottom breathing room.

Now here’s where combo classes come in. If you want a heading to have a little space below it, you can wrap it in a margin_bottom_small div. Want more space? Use margin_bottom_large. Combo classes allow you to pair two or more classes together to achieve specific layout goals without redefining styles repeatedly.

For example, instead of putting margin directly on a button (which will apply everywhere that class is used), wrap it in a button_wrapper and use flex layout with a gap. That way, the spacing logic is in the parent, and the button class can stay clean and reusable.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

One of the biggest issues we see is clients creating dozens of nearly identical classes with small tweaks. You might start with heading, then create heading-2, heading-3, etc., just because you wanted one to be slightly smaller. Pretty soon, you’re dealing with "class spaghetti," and changes become a nightmare.

Instead, use HTML tags (like H1-H6 and P) to define your global defaults. If you want all H1s to be 3rem and use a specific font, set that at the tag level. You can still override it with classes when needed, but the tag ensures consistency site-wide.

This principle applies to paragraphs, buttons, and more. Set your foundational styles in your style guide using the raw HTML tag—that way, even new elements you drop onto the canvas will inherit your base design without any extra classes.

Cleaning Up Your Class List

Let’s say you accidentally create a nonsense class like blah-blah-blah and want to get rid of it. Even if you delete the element, the class might still linger in Webflow’s system. To remove it entirely, go to the style manager (the little raindrop icon), find the unused class, and manually delete it.

This kind of class auditing is great to do every so often—especially after building out a big site. We've seen projects with over 600 uniquely named divs. Keeping this under control will help your site stay fast and maintainable.

Final Thoughts

Clean class management is one of the most critical skills in Webflow. It allows you to build scalable, reusable layouts without the chaos of one-off styling. Stick to consistent naming conventions, rely on utility and combo classes, and define your defaults at the HTML tag level whenever possible.

Everything covered in this guide is already set up in your current project, including a style guide you can reference. If you’re ever unsure, check the guide before creating something new. And if you run into any issues or questions, our support team is here to help—even if the project is already handed off.

Use classes the right way, and you won’t just build faster. You’ll build smarter.

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