How to Change Chart Style in Excel

Tired of Excel’s default blue and orange charts? You don't have to settle for the standard look. With a few clicks, you can instantly change your chart’s style, colors, and layout to perfectly match your brand or highlight the most important data points. This article will walk you through exactly how to change chart styles in Excel, from quick pre-set options to deep customizations you can save for later.

1. Use Pre-Built Chart Styles for a Quick Makeover

The fastest way to change your chart's appearance is by using Excel’s comprehensive gallery of built-in styles. These professionally designed presets let you change colors, add outlines, and apply different effects in a single click.

How to Apply a Pre-set Style:

1. Select your chart: Click anywhere on your chart to select it. When you do, two new contextual tabs will appear in the Ribbon at the top: Chart Design and Format.
2. Navigate to the Chart Design tab: Click on the "Chart Design" tab to see all your styling options.
3. Browse the Chart Styles gallery: In the "Chart Styles" group, you'll see a small gallery of different styles. Hover your mouse over any of these styles to see a live preview of how it will look on your chart.
4. Expand the gallery for more options: For the full selection, click the downward-facing arrow with a line above it (the "More" button) on the right side of the gallery.
5. Choose your style: Click on the style you like best. Your chart will update immediately.

The styles gallery includes a range of looks, from minimalist and modern designs to more classic RAG (Red-Amber-Green) color indicators. It's an excellent starting point for making your data look more polished in a matter of seconds.

2. Customize Your Chart's Color Palette

While pre-built styles are convenient, you often need to use specific brand colors or simply want a different color scheme. Excel makes it easy to change the entire color palette of your chart or customize the color of a single bar, line, or pie slice.

Changing the Entire Color Scheme

1. Select your chart and go to the Chart Design tab.
2. Click the Change Colors button, located next to the Chart Styles gallery.
3. A dropdown menu will appear with palettes grouped into two categories:
4. Hover over any palette to preview it on your chart and click to apply it.

Changing the Color of a Single Data Point or Series

Sometimes you need more granular control to highlight a specific piece of data - like making your highest-performing sales month stand out. Here's how to change the color of an individual series or data point:

1. Click on the data series you want to change. For instance, if you want to change all the blue bars in your column chart, click on any one of them. This will select all bars in that series.
2. Click a second time to isolate a single point. After selecting the entire series, click again on the specific bar, dot, or pie slice you want to change. Be sure it's a slow, deliberate second click, as a double-click will open the format pane immediately. Now, only that single element should be selected.
3. Right-click the selected element. A context menu will appear.
4. Choose your color. From the context menu, you can either:
5. For more advanced options, click Format Data Point... from the right-click menu. This will open the Format pane on the right side of your screen. Under the "Fill & Line" tab (the paint bucket icon), you can choose solid fills, gradient fills, add textures, or create custom borders.

3. Modify the Chart Layout for Better Readability

A good chart style is more than just colors. The layout - the placement of the title, legend, and data labels - has a major impact on how easily your chart can be understood. Excel gives you both quick-fix layouts and a manual way to control every element.

Using Quick Layouts

1. Select your chart and go to the Chart Design tab.
2. On the far left of the tab, click the Quick Layout button.
3. A gallery of different layout options will appear. Each icon shows a small diagram of where elements like the legend, title, data labels, and axes will be placed.
4. Hover over them to see a real-time preview on your chart. For example, some layouts move the legend to the top, some add data labels directly onto the bars, and others add a data table below the chart.
5. Click on the layout that best organizes your information.

Manually Adding, Removing, or Moving Chart Elements

For complete control, you can use the Chart Elements menu. This handy tool lets you add, configure, and remove individual components of your chart.

1. Select your chart.
2. Click the green plus (+) icon that appears in the top-right corner of the chart area.
3. A checklist of all available chart elements will appear (e.g., Axes, Axis Titles, Chart Title, Data Labels, Gridlines, Legend).
4. Add or Remove: Check or uncheck a box to instantly add or remove that element.
5. Position: To change an element’s position, hover over it in the list and click the small black arrow that appears on the right. This will open a submenu with placement options, like moving the Legend to the Top, Bottom, Left, or Right, or centering the Chart Title.

This menu is the most flexible way to build your chart exactly how you want it, giving you full control over what information is shown and where it's located.

4. Fine-Tune Every Last Detail

Once your colors and layout are set, you can polish your chart by tweaking smaller stylistic details like fonts, gridlines, and borders to create a truly custom report.

Changing Fonts

To change the font of any text on your chart, simply click on the text element (like the chart title, axis labels, or legend) to select it. Then, use the font formatting options on the Home tab of the Ribbon to change the font family, size, color, or apply bold and italic styling.

Customizing Gridlines

Default gridlines are often too thick and dark, distracting from the data. You can easily make them less intrusive.

1. Click on the gridlines within your chart to select them.
2. Right-click and choose Format Gridlines... to open the Format pane.
3. In the "Line" options, you can:

Formatting the Chart Area and Plot Area

You can add a background color or a border to your chart to help it stand out on a crowded spreadsheet.

1. Right-click on the background of your chart (either the outer Chart Area or the inner Plot Area).
2. Select Format Chart Area... or Format Plot Area... from the menu.
3. In the format pane, you can specify background colors, gradients, textures, and border styles.

5. Save Your Custom Style as a Chart Template

If you've spent time creating the perfect chart style that aligns with your company's branding, you don’t have to do it all over again every time. You can save your work as a reusable chart template.

Saving a Chart Template

1. Finalize your chart's design until it's exactly how you want it.
2. Right-click on the chart itself.
3. Select Save as Template...
4. In the dialog box, give your template a descriptive name (e.g., "Monthly Marketing KPI Style") and click Save. Excel will save it as a .crtx file in the correct folder automatically.

Using Your Saved Template

1. Select the new data you want to visualize.
2. Go to the Insert tab, and in the Charts group, click the small pop-out icon in the bottom-right corner to open the "Insert Chart" dialog box.
3. In the dialog, click the All Charts tab at the top.
4. Select the Templates category from the list on the left.
5. Click on your saved template and then click OK. A brand new chart will be created using your custom style.

Final Thoughts

Customizing chart styles in Excel transforms your data from a simple grid of numbers into a clear and compelling story. From quick pre-built styles to detailed control over every element, you have all the tools needed to create professional-grade visualizations and even save them as templates for future use.

While Excel is great for manual styling, we know that building reports - especially from live data sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, or Salesforce - can become a repetitive chore of downloading CSVs and recreating charts. We created Graphed to solve this problem by connecting your data and creating dashboards for you. Simply ask for what you need in plain English, and Graphed builds real-time, interactive charts and reports instantly, so you can spend less time styling and more time acting on your insights.