Power BI Color Themes For Uniform Visualizations

by | Power BI

Now let’s talk about colors in your reports. This is one area where I constantly see reporting applications fail. Wrong color themes or clashing colors can make a report look messy.

A proper color palette can make it look cleaner. It will also make a big difference to the consumer experience within your organization. You may watch the full video of this tutorial at the bottom of this blog.

Color is a big part of making your reports look put together.

Colors are essential for your visualizations to ensure they work seamlessly. Thankfully, there are many available color themes in Power BI for you to choose from. You also have the option of making your own custom palette.

Themes Functionality In Power BI

One of the things that Power BI has improved on is how you can generate colors. Before, it used to be a manual process. Now, they have a functionality which enables you to choose a preset theme.

color themes in power bi

For instance, I want to use this particular theme.

color themes in power bi

When I select it, my report automatically changes according to the color theme.

color themes in power bi

This is just my preference, but I don’t want the same color for different visualizations. So, I would choose a color and use its different shades.

For instance, I want to use blue for my report. Now, all my visualizations will be in a shade of blue.

I’ll change the colors by clicking on the visual and pick the color I want to use.

color themes in power bi

The slicer doesn’t automatically change with the theme. So, I’ll change the background color to a dark blue.

color themes in power bi

Then I’ll change the font color to white so it shows clearly.

color themes in power bi

If you take a look at the Enterprise DNA Showcase page, I like to use darker backgrounds. I think that it makes things stand out more.

Without any visuals selected, I’ll change the background color in the Format section. I’ll change the color to a light blue in the page background.

color themes in power bi

Then change the transparency.

color themes in power bi

Now I’ve got a light blue shade as the background.

color themes in power bi

However, the visuals’ background contrasts with the background. I’ll disable them so the visuals will have the page background color instead.

color themes in power bi

I’ll apply this to every visual, even the title. So now, my report looks like this.

color themes in power bi

Creating Grids For A Seamless Visualization

Currently, my report’s visuals look more in sync. What I would do next is create grids.

These grids will define my report so the consumer can quickly navigate through visualizations.

First, I’m going to create a rectangle using the Shapes tool in the Insert tab.

Next, I’ll remove the outline by reducing the line weight to zero.

color themes in power bi

Then I’ll remove the fill and turn on the background.

color themes in power bi

I’ll also change the background to a slightly darker shade of blue.

color themes in power bi

Then I’ll layer it on top of my visualization.

color themes in power bi

At the moment it’s in front of the visualization. But I’ll send it to the back with this option in the Format tab.

Now the shape is behind the visualization.

color themes in power bi

I’ll repeat this for each visualization.

color themes in power bi

I can also select the cards to change their font color.

color themes in power bi

I’ll go the Format section and change the text color to a darker shade of blue and change the category color into a lighter shade.

color themes in power bi
color themes in power bi

Now I have an all blue report that looks clearer and more defined.

color themes in power bi

Creating Your Own Color Theme In Power BI

Lastly, I’ll show you how to create a customized color theme. What you need to do is utilize the resources from the resource pack. You’ll find a text document here.

You’ll see that the text file is a setup for a JSON format. This is the format needed for your color theme to be imported into Power BI.

All you need to do is get the hex colors of your custom palette and input them within the text. Then, the colors will appear as your theme in Power BI once you import it.

A good website to use to create a color theme is coolors.co.

Here, you can make your own complementary palette for your reports.

Once you’ve created a color palette within the text file, save the file with the file name .json at the end.  

It will then save as a JSON file.

And now you can import your customized theme.

color themes in power bi

*****Related Links*****
Using Color Schemes For Power BI Data Visualization
The Importance Of Creating Compelling Power BI Visualizations
Considerations For Dark Background In Power BI Reports

Conclusion

And that’s how you can customize your reports however you like with colors. You can play around with how your visuals look – it’s totally up to you! It’s not too difficult to do yet it makes a big difference.

We’ve also gone through a few formatting ideas as well, so hopefully, you’ve got the idea of how to create your own color themes and how to use them.

Good luck with this!

Sam.

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