How to create a custom colour palette in PowerPoint
How to create a custom colour palette in PowerPoint
To create a custom colour palette in PowerPoint, go to the Design tab, click the dropdown arrow on the Variants panel, select Colours, then Customise Colours. This opens a dialogue where you can set twelve theme colour slots — two dark, two light, six accent colours, and colours for hyperlinks and visited hyperlinks. Once saved, this palette applies automatically to shapes, charts, SmartArt and text colour options throughout the presentation.
Why does a custom colour palette matter in a corporate template?
Without a custom colour palette, PowerPoint defaults to its standard Office colour set. When staff add a chart, a shape or a SmartArt diagram, those elements use the Office colours — blues, greens, reds and yellows that have nothing to do with the organisation’s brand. Staff who notice the mismatch then manually recolour elements, which is time-consuming, inconsistent and creates files where colours are applied as hard-coded hex values rather than theme-linked values.
A correctly configured custom palette means the brand colours appear automatically in every colour picker, every chart colour sequence and every shape fill option. Staff do not need to know the hex codes — the right colours are already the first option available.
What are the twelve theme colour slots?
PowerPoint’s theme colour system uses twelve slots with specific roles. The first two (“Text/Background — Dark 1” and “Dark 2”) are used for dark text and dark background elements. The next two (“Text/Background — Light 1” and “Light 2”) are used for light backgrounds and light text. The following six (“Accent 1” through “Accent 6”) are the colours that populate chart series, SmartArt elements, shape fills and the main colour options in the colour picker. The final two are for hyperlink and visited hyperlink text.
The order in which the six accent colours are set determines the order in which chart series colours appear. Accent 1 is the first data series in any chart. If the organisation’s primary brand colour should be the dominant chart colour, it should be set as Accent 1.
How does the theme palette differ from the standard colour picker?
PowerPoint’s colour picker shows two sections: Theme Colours at the top, which are the twelve slots configured in the theme, and Standard Colours below, which are fixed colours that do not change with the theme. When staff select a colour from the Theme Colours section, that element is linked to the theme — if the palette is ever updated, those elements will update automatically. When staff select a colour from Standard Colours or enter a custom hex code, the element is hard-coded and will not update if the theme changes.
This is why building documents using theme colours is so important for organisations that anticipate rebranding in the future. A presentation built entirely on theme colours can be rebranded by updating the palette file. A presentation built on hard-coded hex values requires manually recolouring every element.
How do you apply a colour palette across Word and Excel as well as PowerPoint?
The theme colour palette can be exported as a .thmx file from PowerPoint (Design > Themes > Save Current Theme) and then imported into Word (Design > Document Formatting > Colors > Customise Colors) and Excel (Page Layout > Themes > Save Current Theme). This creates a consistent palette across all three applications, so charts in Excel, tables in Word and diagrams in PowerPoint all use the same brand colours without any manual configuration.
This cross-application consistency is one of the most powerful and least utilised features of the Microsoft Office system. Most organisations that have custom templates for individual applications have never connected them through a shared theme file — which means chart colours in Excel are still the default Office palette while the PowerPoint template uses brand colours.
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