How to Change Power BI Theme

Applying a consistent, professional design to your Power BI reports doesn't have to be a manual, tedious process. Instead of formatting every single visual one by one, you can use themes to apply brand colors, fonts, and styles across your entire report in a single click. This article will show you how to use Power BI's built-in themes, customize them to fit your brand, and even create your own from scratch.

What are Power BI Themes and Why Should You Use Them?

A Power BI theme is a JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) file that defines the default design settings for your reports. Think of it as a style guide for your data. When you apply a theme, it automatically sets default colors, font styles, visual backgrounds, page wallpapers, and other properties, saving you countless hours of formatting.

Using themes gives you several key advantages:

Consistency: Themes ensure every report you create has a unified, professional look that aligns with your company's branding. No more reports with mismatched colors or fonts.
Efficiency: Applying a theme is a one-click process. You can instantly update the design of a multi-page report instead of manually adjusting hundreds of individual settings.
Scalability: You can share a single theme file with your entire team. This ensures that everyone, from marketing to finance, produces reports with a consistent and officially approved visual identity.

How to Apply a Built-in Theme in Power BI

The easiest way to get started with themes is to use the diverse selection already included in Power BI Desktop. These pre-built options give you a variety of professional palettes to choose from.

Here’s how to apply one:

Open your report in Power BI Desktop.
Navigate to the View tab in the main ribbon at the top.
In the Themes section, you'll see a gallery of theme previews. Click the dropdown arrow on the far right of the gallery to see all available options.
As you hover your mouse over each theme, Power BI will generate a live preview of how it will look on your report.
Once you find one you like, simply click it. The new colors and formatting will be applied instantly to all visuals and pages in your report.

Built-in themes like "Innovate," "Frontier," or "Tidal" offer great starting points for giving your report a quick, professional makeover.

How to Customize a Power BI Theme

Sometimes a built-in theme is close to what you need, but not quite perfect. Maybe you need to match your company's specific brand colors or default to a different font. In this case, you can easily customize the current theme without having to learn any code.

Follow these steps to tweak an existing theme:

1. Open the Theme Customization Menu

First, apply the built-in theme you want to use as your base. Then, in the View tab, click the Themes dropdown arrow and select Customize current theme.

2. Adjust the Theme Settings

This opens a new window where you can modify the core elements of your theme. The menu is divided into several categories:

Name and colors:

Theme colors: Modify the main color palette that Power BI will use for your charts and graphs. You can enter a specific hex code (e.g., #1A2B3C) to match your brand guide perfectly.
Sentiment colors: Define the standard colors for positive, negative, and neutral values, which is great for waterfall charts or KPIs.
Divergent colors: Set the extremes and center for color scales in visuals like maps or conditional formatting in tables.

Text:

This section lets you establish default text settings for everything in your report. You can set the default font family, size, color, and emphasis for titles, cards, KPIs, and tab headers. This is a massive time-saver.

Visuals:

Control the default appearance of all your visuals at once. Here, you can change the background color, add borders, set header styles, and customize tooltips. For example, you can set every visual to have a light grey background and a thin border for a modern look.

Page:

Customize the report canvas itself. You can set a Page background color for the area behind your visuals or a Wallpaper color that fills the entire background canvas, or even add a subtle background image.

Filter pane:

Style the filter pane to match your new theme so every part of your report feels fully integrated and branded.

3. Apply and Save Your New Custom Theme

Once you are happy with your changes, click Apply.

Now for the most important part: saving your customized theme for future use. Go back to the View tab, click the Themes dropdown, and select Save current theme. Power BI will prompt you to save your theme as a JSON file. Give it a descriptive name like "My Company Brand Theme.json" and save it in an accessible location. You can now import this theme into any new report, ensuring brand and design consistency across all your work.

Creating a New Power BI Theme from Scratch with JSON

While the customization menu is powerful, it doesn't give you control over every possible setting. For ultimate control, you can create a theme by writing your own JSON file. This lets you define properties for specific visual types, like turning data labels on by default for all bar charts or making matrix row headers bold.

Don't be intimidated by the code. The best way to learn is by saving a theme you've customized in the UI and then opening that JSON file in a text editor like VS Code or Notepad to see how it works.

Basic JSON Theme Structure

A theme file is a simple text document. At its most basic, it includes a name and sets the main data colors.

To go a step further, you can add a visualStyles object to control specific elements. For example, the following JSON snippet sets the page wallpaper and default visual background:

How to Create and Apply a JSON Theme File

Open a text editor.
Write or paste in your JSON code. For ideas and a list of all formattable properties, check out Microsoft's official documentation or use an online tool like PowerBI.Tips Report Theme Generator.
Save the file with a .json extension (e.g., Corporate-Theme-V1.json).
In Power BI Desktop, navigate to the View tab -> Themes dropdown.
Click on Browse for themes.
Find and select your saved JSON file. Your report will immediately update with the new style definitions.

Tips and Best Practices for Using Power BI Themes

Start Simple: If you're new to creating custom themes, start by using the UI customization options. Save the theme and then open the JSON file to see how your changes were translated into code. It's an excellent way to learn.
Keep a Central Theme File: For organizations, establish a single "master" theme file and store it in a shared repository like SharePoint or Teams. This makes it easy for everyone to access the latest version and maintain brand consistency.
Test Across Visuals: A color palette that looks fantastic on a bar chart might be less effective on a map or a scatter plot. Always apply your new theme to a report with a wide variety of visuals to ensure it works well everywhere.
Prioritize Accessibility: Good design is accessible design. Use color contrast checkers to ensure your text is readable and choose a color palette that is friendly for people with color vision deficiencies.

Final Thoughts

Mastering Power BI themes is a simple yet powerful way to elevate your reports from basic to professional. By standardizing your design process with themes, you can save a significant amount of time, maintain perfect brand consistency, and focus more on finding insights within your data.

The core idea behind themes is to spend less time on manual formatting and more on analysis. At Graphed, we’ve pushed this idea even further. We created an AI data analyst that allows you to connect your marketing and sales data sources and create real-time dashboards using just natural language. Instead of wrangling with custom themes or endlessly formatting reports, you can just tell our AI what to build, and it generates beautiful, insightful dashboards automatically, freeing you up to make smarter business decisions faster.