Three ways to install CSS in Squarespace

Why This Matters

You don’t buy a Squarespace site just to look like everyone else. The templates are fine until every business card at the networking event leads you to the same homepage layout, the same hero fonts and, my personal pet peeve, the same beige buttons. You want your site to do a little bit more, to reflect your brand, not Squarespace’s idea of what “modern” means in 2016.

This is where CSS comes into play. With the right snippets, you could have sharper navigation, slicker buttons, or entirely new styles that never appear in the standard editor. Only, the how of it all swallows up your Saturday. The backend settings are vague, Google throws seven conflicting answers at you, and before you know it, your code is in, but nothing happens or something explodes in the footer.

Every minute spent wrestling with code locations is a moment not spent refining your brand, converting customers, or even just getting to the fun bits. Most people find copy-pasting code enough of a faff the first time. Miss the right spot and you waste hours making changes that only you ever notice (or, worse, accidentally break your contact form before a sales pitch).

Knowing exactly where your CSS belongs prevents you from falling into one of the most common Squarespace traps: the neverending try-and-pray loop.

Common Pitfalls

If you only read one section before thundering off to paste code, let it be this one: the place you paste your CSS matters. Slap a snippet into the wrong spot and one of three useless things happens:

The change does nothing. You try again, still nothing. You feel like you’ve been gaslit by your own website.
The change works… but everywhere. That landing page with its extra-stuffed button now infects every page on your site, including the privacy policy.
Something breaks. The code block you dropped in wipes half your text or makes text unreadable.

Most first-timers make at least one of these mistakes:

Using the ‘Custom CSS’ panel for single-page experiments (and then forgetting, so the accidental styling spreads everywhere).
Pasting CSS directly into a code block but forgetting the essential <style> tags, so the code displays as gobbledegook.
Attempting to style cover pages or special templates from the global CSS when it just… doesn’t work.

The plan you select affects your available features. Personal plans have far fewer levers to pull. If you DON’T know your plan, you could spend half the day searching for buttons that aren’t there.

Step-by-Step Fix

Below, the three approved ways to add CSS to a Squarespace site. I’ll walk you through each, and explain, right up front, which scenario calls for which method.

1. Add CSS Globally via the Custom CSS Panel

Step 1: Open the Custom CSS panel

Find the main menu on your Squarespace dashboard. Click Design, then select Custom CSS. This is your canvas for site-wide magic: fonts, button tweaks, colour schemes that need to apply everywhere (except cover pages, see below).

Step 2: Paste your code

Copy your CSS. Paste it directly into the box provided. Don’t bother with any <style> tags here; the box is built to understand pure CSS. If your code changes something immediately, that’s proof it’s in the right place.

Step 3: Save

Don’t just click away when you see the change. You need to hit the Save button. Otherwise, Squarespace politely forgets everything the moment you leave the page.

Pixelhaze Tip

If you want to test changes safely, paste a little code, check the result, then gradually stack new snippets. Small steps avoid wide-scale site breakages that you have to untangle in a hurry.

Example Use-Case

You want every button on your site to turn your brand green on hover. A snippet like the below, pasted into this panel, will do the trick:

.sqs-block-button-element--small,
.sqs-block-button-element--medium,
.sqs-block-button-element--large {
  background-color: #26a65b !important;
}
.sqs-block-button-element:hover {
  background-color: #1b8846 !important;
}

Caution: Cover pages. The CSS panel does not affect them because Squarespace isolated them on purpose, for reasons lost to time. For cover pages, go to option 2 or 3.

Step 1: Find the page settings

Navigate to the specific page you want to style. Click the “cog” icon (settings) next to its name in your Pages menu.

Step 2: Advance to the Advanced tab

Select the Advanced tab. You’ll see a field marked “Page Header Code Injection”. This field lets you inject code right into the of that particular page, giving you control exactly where it counts.

Stop Guessing Where to Paste Your CSS in Squarespace (Here’s What Actually Works)