Using themes

Themes are a convenient way to quickly adjust the look and feel of your charts, helping them stand out and communicate your message more effectively. Colors and styles can guide the viewer’s attention, set the right tone, and even evoke emotional responses. While beginners may see themes as optional, advanced users often find that they significantly improve how a message is conveyed.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to:

Use existing themes
Create your own theme
Customize multiple charts at once

Learn the anatomy of a theme

Before diving into themes, it’s important to understand their building blocks. While color is key, other elements also shape the look and feel of your charts.

Fonts – The default font in Charts is Lato, but you can choose from 273 included fonts to match your brand or personal style.
Colors – Colors set the mood, convey your message, and grab your audience’s attention. Use the color picker or enter a hexadecimal code to select the perfect shade.
Heading and footnote – Add headings and footnotes to give context and guide your audience. You can customize their size and shade for clarity and emphasis.
Labels and titles – Customize the size and shade of axis titles, labels and value labels to make your chart easier to read.
Lines and mark symbols – Adjust the color and thickness of axis lines, grid lines, and tick marks to highlight key data and improve readability.
Tooltip – Tooltips appear when users hover over a data point, showing the text you specify. You can also customize the size of the tooltip box.

Apply an existing theme

Selecting the right colors can make your chart more engaging and help your visualization stand out. You can choose from a variety of predefined style themes or create your own custom theme with a personalized color scheme. Before creating a custom theme, check if any of the premade themes meet your needs. Let’s explore what’s available out of the box.

While viewing a chart, open the Themes panel.
Click a theme to apply it.

All changes are applied in real time, so you can try out all themes just by clicking them.

Create your own theme

Now that you’ve learned how to switch between themes, let’s create a custom theme. To avoid starting from scratch, we’ll begin by selecting one of the existing themes as a starting point.

In the themes panel, select the theme you want to use as the starting point for your custom theme.

Click New theme.

This will create a copy of the theme you’re currently using and all of its settings as the starting point of your new theme.

Using theme editor

Right now, you’re viewing the settings of the existing theme you selected. The theme editor lets you preview how the theme will look when applied to your chart. Let’s set everything up.

Click the Theme title to edit it.

Next to Font family, click the dropdown icon and choose the font for your chart.

You can choose from 273 included fonts to match your brand or personal style.

In the Color palette section, click the circle with the color you want to remove or edit.

To add a new color to your theme, click the add icon .

Enter the hex code of the color you want to add to your theme, or select it from the color picker below the hex code field.

When you apply a theme, colors are applied sequentially from the palette. For example, if your chart has two series, the first two colors from the theme will be assigned automatically.

Set headings, footnote, axis titles and labels, and value labels colors with sliders and adjust font size using the dropdown .

Customize axis lines, grid lines, and tick marks, set line thickness and choose from five grid styles.

Set the size of the tooltip.

When done, in the upper-right corner, click Save.

Customize multiple charts at once

Themes are a powerful way to maintain consistency and strengthen your brand image. Whether you’re working with your company’s or university’s color scheme, having a theme can be extremely useful. Over time, you may need to refresh the look and feel of your charts to reflect your evolving brand.

Charts themes are designed to adapt to any brand or personal preference, no matter how quickly it changes. Once you update a theme, the changes are automatically applied to every chart that uses it, ensuring your visuals stay up-to-date and cohesive.

In the theme panel’s Custom section, locate the theme you created.

Click the more icon in the upper-right corner of the theme thumbnail.

Click Edit.

Customize any element as needed, just like when creating the theme.

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When finished, click Save.

Once saved, your changes will automatically update all charts using this theme.