It is an interactive, WYSIWYG front-end for designing XAML-based interfaces for Windows Presentation Foundation, Silverlight and UWP applications.

On January 24, 2007, Microsoft released the first public Community Technology Preview of Expression Blend as a free download on their web site.

The final version was released to manufacturing along with other Expression products on April 30, 2007.

The RTM news was announced at Microsoft's MIX 07 conference for web developers and designers.

In December 2012, Microsoft announced that they were discontinuing the standalone Expression suite tools.