Flutter › Flutter Material Design Components

How can you properly build a fully custom Material component by directly composing together several lower level Material building blocks, such as InkWell and Material, rather than simply relying entirely on a fully pre built higher level widget?

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Answer

Building a genuinely fully custom Material styled component, such as a uniquely designed interactive card featuring a genuinely very specific custom shape or a particular animation not directly supported by any existing pre built higher level widget, typically involves directly composing together several lower level Material building blocks yourself, including a Material widget specifically to properly provide the correct underlying elevation and shadow rendering, combined with an InkWell specifically to properly handle the actual tap interaction and its accompanying visual ripple effect, giving you genuinely full and complete creative control while still consistently retaining the exact familiar underlying Material interaction feel that users would already broadly expect.
Material(
  elevation: 4,
  borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(16),
  child: InkWell(
    borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(16),
    onTap: onTap,
    child: Padding(padding: EdgeInsets.all(16), child: customContent),
  ),
)
Real-world example A design team builds a genuinely fully custom interactive product card featuring a particular unique custom shape combined with a genuinely subtle custom press animation, by directly composing Material and InkWell together themselves, while still fully retaining the exact same familiar underlying Material ripple interaction feel users would already broadly expect from other typical Material styled apps.

Common follow-ups: Why does the InkWell's own borderRadius genuinely need to properly match the enclosing Material widget's own borderRadius?;What other lower level Material building blocks exist beyond just Material and InkWell?