Forwarding refs allows components to pass DOM references through to their children, enabling parent components to directly access nested elements. With over 11 years of experience in software development and as the creator of CoreUI, I’ve used ref forwarding extensively in component libraries and reusable UI elements. From my expertise, the most reliable approach is using React.forwardRef() to wrap components that need to expose their inner DOM elements. This pattern is essential for building accessible, reusable components that work seamlessly with parent component logic.