I am currently working on a web application, and I am using Material-UI. The problem is that I always find myself in a situation where I have to override styles from material-UI, and I have to write a lot of CSS
It is normal. A perfect UI Framework for your needs does not exists. As long as the overrides aren’t too large, it really worth it. It saves not only CSS, also Components features and some browsers compatibilities issues.
Try to keep it simple, maybe the changes are not always needed. They look pretty good by default. And match a whole design.
The other way is (having a professional designer design) from scratch, which is a lot of extra work. (If you don’t have such profesional, don’t even try it). But if it’s mandatory a fixed desig, very different from Material UI, go for it.
Finding another UI Framework, probably less wide/mature than Material UI for React, will requires changes too.
Of course try to reuse components. Check the Theme for custom colors, ...
I hope it helps. This is my opinion. I have used Material UI for a couple of projects, happy doing it.
A thing about web dev that fascinates me so much is the 'context'. What you use, where you use, how you use and why you use depends on the context: requirement of the client, developers' comfort/skill level, priorities like performance or semantics or agile development.
I have tried Material UI, Bootstrap and Semantic UI. Among these I find the look of Semantic UI a bit more modern, professional, featured and distinct But it isn't always about looks. Though I like Semantic UI a lot I don't keep it in priority unless I'm the only one working on a project. "Why?".... because it has not been in active development for a while. Though it looks stable but it's build setup is outdated and throws error when adding it as npm dependency.
Coming back to the primary concern, I think there is almost always a situation where you need CSS customization. So be it Material UI or Tailwind, there is a strong possibility of us needing to write custom CSS.
Far as I'm concerned, I prefer reading the MaterialUI guidelines and implementing the design using Tailwind CSS (for the most part).