I always recommend using a color palette when you build slides. You will get your work done faster, enjoy building slides more and the slides will look more professional. One of the best places for creating a color palette is Kuler.
After you’ve created your color palette, you’ll want to program it into PowerPoint. Let me show you how. First, here is the color palette I use.
To build a custom color palette, the first thing you’ll do is go to Design > Colors > Create New Theme Colors. You’ll meet an interface that looks like this. It’s a bit confusing, so let me explain what you’re looking at.
1. Accent 1.This will be the default color when you draw lines and shapes. I recommend using gray for Accent 1, or whatever color you want your shapes to automatically contain.
2.Accent 2-6. The 5 colors from your color palette go into Accent 2-6. If you have more than 5 colors in your color palette, you can add them as Text/Background colors [described later].
3. Hyperlinks.For hyperlink colors, choose one of your darker accent colors. For followed hyperlink, choose a lighter version of that accent color. Light colors indicate it’s been “depleted”
4. Text/Background – Dark 1 and Light 1 are your text colors. Dark1 can be black. Light1 can be white. These colors show up in the first two columns of your color menu and if you choose black and white you’ll end up with a complete range of grays in increments of 10%. Or you can choose different text colors if you prefer.
5. Text/Background – Dark 2 and Light 2 are your background colors. To be honest, these are a bit of a mystery to me since I use a white background for business slides or one of my accent colors if I need a color background. If you have more than 5 colors in your color palette, you might add them here, or just choose 2 extra colors you think you might need.
Now just name your new color theme, click “Save” and you’re done. Once your new color theme is saved, you can select it any time and your Color Picker pull-down menu will show your custom color palette, ready for use.
About the author: Bruce Gabrielle is author of Speaking PowerPoint: the New Language of Business, showing a 12-step method for creating clearer and more persuasive PowerPoint slides for boardroom presentations. Subscribe to this blog or join my LinkedIn group to get new posts sent to your inbox.
- January 13, 2021
- Lee-Ann
Using a consistent color palette throughout your PowerPoint presentation makes it look more polished. Although many organizations already have a defined set of colors to use in presentations, the following is a quick tutorial if you need to set up the PowerPoint color palette.
A note about themes and templates in PowerPoint: PowerPoint calls the defined set of colors for a presentation a ‘theme’. However, if you look for themes on the design tab, you will see a series of slides which imply that ‘themes’ include templates and layouts. They don’t. Themes, templates and layouts are all different, but you use them together.
First step is to decide which colors you want to use. If your company has a Marketing team, they probably have a ‘branding document’ which specifies the colors and fonts you should use. If you need to add accent colors [or you do not have a marketing team], there are a lot of online resources that can help you with selecting complementary colors. The Adobe color wheel is a really helpful resource – perfect for identifying complementary colors: //color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel.
Once you have selected your colors, you’re ready to build the custom color palette for your PowerPoint theme.
Navigate to the View tab on the ribbon and open the Slide Master. Click the ‘Colors’ dropdown menu. You will see pre-defined color palettes. At the end of the list is an option to Customize Colors.
Click on Customize Colors and the ‘Create New Theme Colors’ box will open
The ‘Create New Theme Colors’ box has a list of Background and Accent colors.
- Text/Background – Dark and Light 1 and 2 are the background and text colors to use if you are using colored backgrounds. You can also use black and white.
- Accent 1 will be the default color when you draw lines and shapes.
- Accent 2-6 are the 5 colors from your color palette – the main colors you want to use in your presentations.
You can also choose your Hyperlink colors – common practice is to select a darker color for the Hyperlink, and a lighter one for a ‘Followed Hyperlink’
Click the dropdown arrow next to each color to choose your custom colors.
If your required color does not display in the preview, click ‘More Colors…’ to reveal additional options
You can choose colors from the Standard colors, but for greater accuracy and options select the ‘Custom’ tab and enter RGB or Hex attributes to select specific colors.
Repeat this process for each of the Accent, background/ text and hyperlink colors. At the bottom of the ‘Create New Theme Colors’ box, enter a name for your color palette.
Hit ‘Save’ and you’re done! Your current presentation will automatically update to use the attributes of your new color palette. If you’re using PPT Productivity Power Tools, the top set of colors on your Color Toolbar will update accordingly [making it easy to use your theme colors throughout your presentation]. You can use your new color palette in any presentation by navigating to the Master Slide and selecting it from the ‘Colors’ drop down
Can I add more colors to my PowerPoint theme?
PowerPoint limits the number of colors in PowerPoint Themese to:
- 6 accent colors,
- 4 text colors that can be used with dark and light backgrounds [2 dark and 2 light]; and
- 2 hyperlink colors [one for unfollowed and one for followed]
However if your organization has an extended color palette that you want to be able to easily access when creating presentations, you can add these to your PPT Productivity Color Palette Toolbar. This will make the colors available for easy use each time you open PowerPoint. You can also share your extended color palette with team members [if they are also using PPT Productivity]. And you can add custom color names to your colors.
Can I update Slide Library shapes to match the color of my themes?
We have created the PPT Productivity downloadable galleries of shapes in the Slide Library to automatically ‘inherit theme colors’. This means irrespective of the thumbnail color of the shape in the gallery, when you paste one of our preset shapes or slides into your document, it will adopt the template colors. If you need to update any of your custom shapes in your personal gallery to work this way, simply paste them onto your presentation, change the color using your theme colors – i.e. the colors that are in your templates color palette – and re-save the shape to your personal gallery
Visit our PowerPoint Tips blog page to find more tutorial information.
If you have any questions about how to perform specific PowerPoint tasks, please do not hesitate to reach out.
Please note: All instructions provided in our tutorial articles are based on PowerPoint for Windows 365 and are current at time of publishing.
Want to create polished presentations faster? With PPT Productivity, boost your team's productivity with faster formatting, easier editing, collaboration tools and more! If you're not yet using PPT Productivity, download our free 30 day trial today. We offer free one-on-one training and flexible licensing to suit individuals, teams or enterprise.
Want to see our tools in action?
Book a personalized demo with our PowerPoint professionals
Book Live Demo
Download 30 Day Free Trial
Download your 30 day free trial - Microsoft Office for Windows
Start Free Trial
Hints and Tips PowerPoint Hacks, PowerPoint Productivity, PowerPoint Themes, PowerPoint Presentations, PowerPoint Slides, Color Toolbar, PowerPoint Color Palettes, PowerPoint Tips, PowerPoint Color themes, PowerPoint Template Colors, Working with PowerPoint, Color Theme