In the React ecosystem, managing state effectively is crucial for maintaining scalable, maintainable, and performant applications. As your application grows, the state management strategy you choose—and how well you implement it—can significantly affect your development speed and user experience.

In this post, we’ll break down the most effective best practices when working with state in React, along with example code snippets to help reinforce these principles.

🏗️ Local vs Global State: Choose Wisely

Local State: Managed with useState, useReducer, or useRef. Ideal for UI interactions or component-specific state.

const [isModalOpen, setIsModalOpen] = useState(false);

Global State: Used when data needs to be shared across multiple components. Choose tools like:

  • Context API (lightweight)
  • Zustand or Jotai (modern alternatives)
  • Redux or Recoil (complex app needs)

📌 Best Practice: Avoid lifting state up unnecessarily. Only promote state to a global scope when it’s shared between distinct parts of the app.

🎯 Use the Right Hook for the Job

  • useState: Simple and effective for small pieces of UI state
  • useReducer: Better for complex state logic or multiple transitions
  • useRef: Great for tracking values without causing re-renders 
const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch (action.type) {
    case 'increment':
      return { count: state.count + 1 };
    default:
      return state;
  }
};
const [state, dispatch] = useReducer(reducer, { count: 0 });

🧵 Keep State Close to Where It’s Used

Minimize unnecessary prop-drilling by colocating state with the components that use it. This improves readability and component encapsulation.

❌ Avoid:

<App>
  <Dashboard count={count} />
App>

✅ Prefer:

<Dashboard />

Where Dashboard manages its own count.

🌐 Use Context API Sparingly

While useful for sharing global state (like theme, auth, or language), Context re-renders all consuming components whenever its value changes.

✅ Best Practice: Avoid storing frequently updated values (like form inputs) in context. Use it for static or rarely changed data.

🧰 Modern State Management Libraries

When your app becomes large, consider these libraries:

  • Zustand: Minimal and ergonomic
  • Jotai: Atomic model for state
  • Recoil: Facebook’s answer to scalable React state
  • Redux Toolkit: Industry-standard for robust apps 
// Zustand example
import { create } from 'zustand'

const useStore = create((set) => ({
  count: 0,
  increment: () => set((state) => ({ count: state.count + 1 }))
}));

const Counter = () => {
  const { count, increment } = useStore();
  return <button onClick={increment}>Count: {count}button>;
};

💡 Bonus Tips

  • Normalize your state: Especially useful for managing lists of objects (like Redux with createEntityAdapter)
  • Use selectors and memoization to prevent unnecessary re-renders
  • Split state logic into custom hooks to keep components clean

🧭 Summary

Managing state in React is part art, part engineering. As your app scales, the decisions you make around state—what goes local, what becomes global, and how you organize your logic—will define the maintainability and performance of your application.

Stay lean, colocate wisely, and don’t be afraid to embrace modern tools that simplify complex workflows.