Power BI comes with several built-in themes and a whole gallery full of custom themes available for download. But what if you still can’t find the perfect look for your reports? No problem! Just create your own custom Power BI themes :)
…sounds simple enough, right? It only takes a few minutes to create a custom Power BI theme with a color palette of your choice. Whoosh – instant custom branding!
But if you are like me, simple color changes might not be enough. Maybe you want finer control of borders, fonts, labels, or other visual elements. Or maybe you just don’t want to keep changing the same settings over and over and over again in multiple visualizations and reports. (Please don’t do that.)
You can control all of these things in custom Power BI themes. It is, however, not quite as simple as creating a color palette… yet. (You never know when the Power BI product team will blow your mind with a new update!) But for now, we need to define custom themes in JSON files.
(Does the thought of writing JSON make you go “eww” or “ugh“? Don’t worry! Just head on over to the PowerBI.tips Report Theme Generator instead and let it do the work for you. It is a fantastic resource!)
Learning with Cathrine
Since I have an awful memory and can barely remember what I did last month, I will be blogging while learning how to create my own custom Power BI themes. That means that all posts and examples may change at any time. And I’m sure they will, every time I learn something new.
My posts will be more like journal entries than technical references, but my goal is to create a series of cheat sheets for myself that I can reference later. Maybe you can learn something as well? :)
In this post, I will focus on the basics and share some resources to help you get started. I will first create my color palette, then define the basic JSON theme file that I will continue to build on in later blog posts.
Ok. Let’s go! :)
Picking Colors
First, make sure you read Meagan Longoria’s excellent post Choosing a Color Palette for Your Power BI Report. She explains what to consider when choosing colors, why you want to choose certain colors over others, and how to check if your color palette is accessible.
Then, find a color picker or color palette tool that works for you. There are many free apps available, so you may have to try a few different ones. My favorites are:
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