What Font Does Power BI Use?

Chances are, if you've ever built a report in Power BI, you've used its default font without even thinking about it. That clean, clear, and distinctly "Microsoft" look is provided by a font family called Segoe UI. This article will not only tell you what the default font is but will show you how to change it, how to implement custom brand fonts correctly, and some best practices for typography in your reports.

What Is the Default Power BI Font?

The primary font used across the entire Power BI interface - from titles and axis labels to card visuals and slicers - is Segoe UI. If you don't manually change any text settings in your report, you are looking at Segoe UI.

Segoe (pronounced "SEE-go") is a sans-serif typeface family designed by Microsoft. You'll recognize it from countless Microsoft products, including Windows, Office, and Outlook. It was specifically developed for user interfaces (hence the "UI" designation) with a focus on high legibility and a friendly, open feel, making it an excellent choice for on-screen data representation.

Characteristics of Segoe UI

• Clean and Modern: It lacks the decorative "feet" (serifs) of fonts like Times New Roman, giving it a clean, contemporary appearance that doesn’t distract from the data.
• High Readability: The letterforms have a large x-height (the height of a lowercase "x") and generous spacing, which makes them incredibly easy to read at small sizes on a screen - perfect for data labels and axis categories.
• Versatile: It comes in a variety of weights (Light, Semilight, Regular, Semibold, Bold, Black), giving you options for creating visual hierarchy without needing to introduce a new font family.

Which Other Fonts Are Used?

While Segoe UI is the workhorse, Power BI visuals occasionally use other fonts by default for specific rendering purposes, particularly for numbers in certain charts. A common numeric font you might see is DIN, a sans-serif font known for its clean, geometric lines, which helps make numbers clear and unambiguous.

However, for all practical purposes and user-facing text, Segoe UI is the one you will be interacting with 99% of the time.

How to Change Fonts in Power BI

Sticking with the default is fine, but branding and design often require you to change fonts. Power BI gives you several ways to do this, ranging from a quick, one-off change on a single visual to an overarching theme that defines every text element in your report.

1. Changing the Font on a Single Visual

This method is quick and easy for when you just want to modify one specific chart or table.

1. Select the visual you want to change in your report canvas.
2. In the Visualizations pane on the right, click the paintbrush icon to open the Format your visual menu.
3. From here, you'll need to navigate to the specific text element you want to change. The location can vary slightly by visual, but here are common paths:
4. Click the font-family dropdown menu to select a new font.

While simple, formatting visuals one by one is time-consuming and can lead to an inconsistent design. For report-wide changes, you should use themes.

2. Changing Fonts Globally with Themes

Using a theme is the best practice for establishing a consistent look and feel across your entire Power BI report. Instead of formatting each visual individually, you define a set of rules—including fonts—that apply everywhere.

1. In the Power BI Desktop ribbon, click the View tab.
2. Find the Themes section. You can try a pre-built theme, but to set your own fonts, click the dropdown arrow and select Customize current theme.
3. A new window will open. On the left, select the Text tab.
4. You now have options to set the default fonts and text sizes for four main categories:
5. Change the fonts in each category to match your requirements and click Apply.

This process updates every visual in your report instantly, guaranteeing a uniform font experience. If you create a new visual after customizing the theme, it will automatically adopt these new font settings.

Using and Embedding Custom Fonts

What if your company has a specific brand font, like Lato or Montserrat, that isn't in Power BI's default list? You can use it, but you have to be careful about how you implement it to ensure other users see your report as you designed it.

The Challenge: A font must be installed on a user's machine for Power BI to display it correctly. If you build a report using a custom font and share it, any user who does not have that font installed will see the text fall back to the default Segoe UI. This can break your spacing, formatting, and overall design.

The Solution: You can solve this by embedding fallback fonts directly into your theme's JSON file. This tells the web browser what to do if it can't find your primary custom font.

How to Add Fallback Fonts to a Theme File

1. First, configure the fonts as much as you can using the Customize current theme steps from above. This gives you a good starting point.
2. In the View > Themes menu, click the dropdown and select Save current theme. This exports your theme as a JSON file.
3. Open the saved JSON file in a text editor like Notepad or VS Code.
4. You'll see code defining your styles. Look for the "textClasses" section or the font families you set, such as "fontFamily": "Your Custom Font".
5. Modify the fontFamily property to include web-safe fallback fonts. The syntax is a comma-separated list. For example, if your brand font is "Lato," change the line to: "fontFamily": "Lato, Arial, sans-serif" This command tells the browser, "Try to load Lato. If you can't find it, try Arial. If you can't find that, just use any generic sans-serif font available."
6. Do this for every text element (titles, labels, etc.) you want to control. A basic change for all visual labels might look like this:
7. Save the JSON file.
8. Back in Power BI Desktop, go to View > Themes, click the dropdown and select Browse for themes. Select your edited JSON file to apply the changes.

By specifying fallback fonts, you ensure your report remains legible and well-structured, even if viewers don't have your preferred custom brand font installed. Your report's design will degrade gracefully instead of breaking completely.

Font Best Practices for Power BI Reports

Choosing the right font is about more than just aesthetics, it directly impacts how easily your audience can understand your data.

• Prioritize Readability: The goal is clarity. Avoid decorative or script fonts that are difficult to read, especially at smaller sizes. Stick to clean, simple sans-serif fonts for data visualizations.
• Limit Your Palette: Don't use more than two font families in a single report. A common strategy is one font for headings and titles, and another for body text and data labels. Often, simply using different weights (Regular, Bold) and sizes of one single font family is the most professional approach.
• Align with Your Brand: If your organization has brand guidelines, use the specified fonts. It creates a cohesive and professional look that aligns your Power BI reports with other company assets. Just remember to use fallbacks!
• Test for Size: Make sure your text is legible on a variety of screen sizes. What looks good on your large desktop monitor might be unreadable on a colleague's laptop screen. 10pt is a good minimum for body/data text, and 14-18pt works well for titles.
• Use Color and Weight for Emphasis: Instead of introducing a new font to highlight something, try making it bold or changing its color. These tools create a clear visual hierarchy and draw attention without cluttering the design.

Final Thoughts

So, the simple answer is that Power BI's default font is Segoe UI. It’s a readable, neutral choice perfect for data. But knowing how to effectively change that font—either for one visual or across your entire report with themes—is what separates a basic report from a polished, professional one. For shared reports, always embed custom fonts with web-safe fallbacks in your theme file to maintain design integrity.

Digging into theme files and manually adjusting visual settings is a core part of the traditional BI workflow, but it can consume hours that should be spent on analysis. With Graphed, we aim to eliminate that friction completely. You can connect your data sources and tell our AI in plain English, "Show me a dashboard of my monthly sales by region," and it instantly creates a clean, professional report. All the manual formatting is handled for you, so you can stop wrestling with JSON files and focus entirely on the insights your data holds.