Use themes for consistent color schemes

Use built-in themes or create custom themes to ensure consistent color schemes across all the elements in your intelligence dashboards. Themes reduce the time and effort spent on dashboard design. Applying themes eliminates the need for manually styling each element and promotes better readability with pre-tested color contrasts.

In this article, you learn to apply single-click themes in your dashboards, charts and KPI cards. You also learn how to customize, import and export themes.

Apply dashboard themes#

Dashboard themes provide a faster way to apply colors, fonts, and styling across KPIs, charts, and visual elements. With single-click themes, instantly apply a color scheme without having to configure each element separately.

In the Intelligence ribbon, go to Canvas > Themes to select a different color palette.

Intelligence sheets support multiple pre-defined themes:

• Light – A clean, bright theme designed for general business reporting and everyday dashboard use.
• Dark – A dark-background theme that reduces screen glare and improves visibility in low-light environments.
• Colorblind Light – A light theme that uses a color palette optimized for users with color vision deficiencies, improving accessibility and readability.
• Colorblind Dark – A dark theme with colorblind-friendly colors, combining accessibility with a low-glare viewing experience.
• IBCS – A theme based on the principles of the International Business Communication Standards (IBCS), using standardized colors, visual conventions, and formatting to improve report consistency and data comprehension.

Select a theme to apply it across all the elements in the dashboard.

Create and edit dashboard themes #

Themes support extensive customizations. Tailor themes to match your organization's branding, reporting standards, or accessibility requirements. Modify colors, canvas backgrounds, text formatting, borders, and headers for a standardized dashboard design.

1. Select Add Theme.
2. In the Color Palette section, specify the chart and variance colors.
3. Use the Page section, to set the canvas and wallpaper backgrounds. Import images or select a color for the background. You can also enable gridlines and set page dimensions.
4. Customize the font family, font size, and color. For automatic adjustments:

• Enable Responsive Size to adjust the font size based on the canvas area.
• Turn on the Enable Auto Font option to change the font color for maximum visibility based on the background.

5. Set the border, shadow, and header colors from the Layout section.

Import and export dashboard themes

Import custom themes in JSON format into an intelligence sheet to apply formatting standards across dashboards and reports. Select Import JSON. Upload a JSON file or paste the content.

Export themes configured within an intelligence sheet and reuse them across intelligence sheets. Hover over a theme and select More options (...) > Export. Copy the configuration and save it in a .json file.

Apply built-in themes for charts

Each chart type is rendered using a default color scheme. Select a different theme to change the colors.

1. To select a theme, on the chart ribbon, in this example Treemap, select the paintbrush icon to view available themes.

2. Select color palettes like the dark theme or colorblind dark/white from the Classic theme section.

3. Apply themes that conform to specific standards like IBCS. By applying an IBCS-aligned theme with a single click, you can create dashboards that follow established reporting conventions.

Change the theme for KPI cards#

Change the theme to quickly use a predefined set of colors and formatting options in KPI dashboards. In the KPI ribbon, go to Settings > Theme and apply a theme.

Theme colors determine the appearance of both KPI metrics and charts.

Create custom themes#

Modify theme settings to align with your organization's branding and reporting needs. To customize theme colors, go to Settings > Theme > Classic > Customize. You can assign colors for charts, measures, variances, etc.

• Expand the Measure Colors section and set the color used to render each measure.

• Assign colors used to show positive and negative variances from the Variance Colors section.

• Assign a custom background and font color from the Canvas Colors section.

After designing a theme, you can export the JSON config and save it as a .json file. Import the config file to reuse the same theme in across all your charts.