How to add your brand colours to a PowerPoint template
How to add your brand colours to a PowerPoint template
Go to View > Slide Master, then click Colours > Customise Colours on the Slide Master ribbon. Enter your brand's HEX or RGB values into the 12 theme colour slots, name the palette, and save it. Every chart, shape, text box and SmartArt graphic in your template will draw from these colours, keeping the entire presentation on brand without staff needing to look up colour codes.
Where do theme colours appear in PowerPoint?
Theme colours control more than backgrounds and text. They populate the colour picker that appears whenever someone changes a shape fill, font colour, chart series, table border or SmartArt element. PowerPoint organises its colour picker into a grid: the top row shows your 12 theme colours, and the rows beneath show tints and shades of each one. If your theme colours are set correctly, your team picks from an on-brand palette by default.
This is why adding brand colours at the theme level matters far more than placing coloured shapes on the slide master. Shapes on the master control what the slide looks like when it is first created. Theme colours control what happens when staff start building content.
What are the 12 theme colour slots?
PowerPoint's theme colour system has four groups. The first two slots are Dark 1 and Light 1, which control default text and background colours. The next two, Dark 2 and Light 2, provide secondary text and background options. The remaining eight slots, Accent 1 through Accent 6 plus Hyperlink and Followed Hyperlink, are the colours your team uses most when building slides.
Map your primary brand colour to Accent 1. This is the default colour PowerPoint assigns to the first chart series, the first SmartArt element and many shape fills. Your secondary brand colour goes in Accent 2, with supporting palette colours filling Accents 3 through 6. Many organisations leave Hyperlink and Followed Hyperlink as default blue and purple, but if your brand guidelines specify link colours, set them here.
How do you enter exact colour values?
In the Customise Colours dialogue, click the dropdown for each colour slot and select More Colours. Switch to the Custom tab, choose the RGB or HSL colour model, and type your values directly. If you work with HEX codes, PowerPoint 365 and later versions accept HEX input in this same dialogue box. Earlier versions require you to convert HEX to RGB first.
Name the colour theme something clear and identifiable, such as your company name. This name appears in the Colours dropdown, so if your template is distributed across a large organisation, staff can verify they are using the correct palette at a glance.
What about colours that sit outside the theme?
Most brand guidelines include more than 12 colours. You might have specific colours for sub-brands, divisions or accent graphics that do not fit neatly into the theme slots. These colours cannot be added to the theme system, but you can place them on a hidden reference slide within the template, showing colour swatches with HEX codes labelled. Staff can then use the eyedropper tool to sample from that reference slide when needed.
At Ideaseed, we build colour reference slides into most enterprise templates we deliver. It solves the problem of staff reaching for colours outside the brand palette because they cannot find the right shade in the theme picker.
Why do colours sometimes look wrong after setup?
Two issues cause this. First, if someone has applied direct colour formatting (choosing a specific RGB value rather than a theme colour) to shapes or text, those elements will not update when you change the theme. They remain pinned to the hard-coded colour. Second, if your template is opened on a machine with a different colour profile or monitor calibration, on-screen colours may look slightly different. This is a display issue, not a template issue. The colour values remain correct in the file.
To check whether a shape is using a theme colour or a hard-coded value, select it, open Format Shape, and look at the fill colour. If it shows a theme colour name (such as Accent 1), it will update with the theme. If it shows an RGB value, it will not.
Setting up theme colours correctly takes 15 minutes and prevents months of off-brand presentations. Map your primary brand colour to Accent 1, fill in the remaining slots with your brand palette, and name the theme so your team can verify it at a glance.
Need help getting your brand colours working across PowerPoint, Word and Excel templates? Talk to Ideaseed about a template project.
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