Angular 2: How to style host element of the component?

There was a bug, but it was fixed in the meantime. :host { } works fine now.

Also supported are

• :host(selector) { ... } for selector to match attributes, classes, ... on the host element

• :host-context(selector) { ... } for selector to match elements, classes, ...on parent components

• selector /deep/ selector (alias selector >>> selector doesn't work with SASS) for styles to match across element boundaries

  • UPDATE: SASS is deprecating /deep/.
    Angular (TS and Dart) added ::ng-deep as a replacement that's also compatible with SASS.

  • UPDATE2: ::slotted ::slotted is now supported by all new browsers and can be used with `ViewEncapsulation.ShadowDom
    https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/::slotted

See also Load external css style into Angular 2 Component

/deep/ and >>> are not affected by the same selector combinators that in Chrome which are deprecated.
Angular emulates (rewrites) them, and therefore doesn't depend on browsers supporting them.

This is also why /deep/ and >>> don't work with ViewEncapsulation.Native which enables native shadow DOM and depends on browser support.

I have found a solution how to style just the component element. I have not found any documentation how it works, but you can put attributes values into the component directive, under the 'host' property like this:

@Component({
    ...
    styles: [`
      :host {
        'style': 'display: table; height: 100%',
        'class': 'myClass'
      }`
})
export class MyComponent
{
    constructor() {}

    // Also you can use @HostBinding decorator
    @HostBinding('style.background-color') public color: string = 'lime';
    @HostBinding('class.highlighted') public highlighted: boolean = true;
}

UPDATE: As Günter Zöchbauer mentioned, there was a bug, and now you can style the host element even in css file, like this:

:host{ ... }

Check out this issue. I think the bug will be resolved when new template precompilation logic will be implemented. For now I think the best you can do is to wrap your template into <div class="root"> and style this div:

@Component({ ... })
@View({
  template: `
    <div class="root">
      <h2>Hello Angular2!</h2>
      <p>here is your template</p>
    </div>
  `,
  styles: [`
    .root {
      background: blue;
    }
  `],
   ...
})
class SomeComponent {}

See this plunker