Add and apply color themes
Apply coordinated colors to your design in one click using color themes. Themes update your background, elements, and text together to keep your designs consistent.
Color themes are different from brand colors. Brand colors are a palette, while themes define how those colors are applied across your design.
Check if you can use color themes:
- Available to Canva Pro, Canva Teams, Canva Business, Canva Enterprise, Canva Education, and Canva for Nonprofits users with Brand Kit access.
- Creating and editing color themes requires Brand Kit edit access. In team Brand Kits, only owners, admins, and brand designers can manage themes.
- If you have edit access, you can create themes from suggestions or by extracting them from a design. Creating themes from scratch isn’t available.
Apply a color theme to your design
Use your saved color theme from your Brand Kit to quickly update your design.
- Open your design.
- Select Brand from the side panel.
- Under Colors, hover over a theme and select Shuffle to apply it.
- Select Shuffle again to preview other combinations.
To apply a specific combination:
- Select (More options) on the theme card.
Themes apply to the current page by default. Select Apply to all pages to update your entire design.
Apply from the Edit panel
- Open your design.
- Select Brand from the side panel.
- Under Colors, hover over a theme and select Shuffle to apply it.
- Select Shuffle again to preview other combinations.
To apply a specific combination:
- Select (More options) on the theme card.
Themes apply to the current page by default. Select Apply to all pages to update your entire design.
If you don’t have any themes yet, you can create one from your Brand Templates or existing designs.
Create a color theme
Create themes from your Brand Templates or existing designs. Creating themes from scratch isn’t available.
From Brand Templates
Suggested themes appear when your Brand Templates align with your Brand Kit fonts and colors.
- Go to Brand
- Select Colors, then scroll to Themes
- Select a suggested theme
- Select Add to Brand Kit
From a design
Generate color themes from your existing designs.
- Go to Brand.
- Select Colors, then scroll to Themes
- Select Generate.
- Search for a design or select one from the suggestions
- Select Generate color themes
- Review the suggested combinations and how colors are assigned to backgrounds, elements, and text.
- Select a combination to customize
- Optional: Rename the theme or add guidelines.
- Select Add to Brand Kit
You can repeat this to add multiple theme variations.
See what color themes work with
Color themes automatically update supported elements in your design.
Themes work with:
- Backgrounds (including gradients)
- Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
- Text
Themes don't apply to:
- PNG or JPG images
- Charts
- Locked elements
- Gradients on elements or text (these are replaced with solid colors)
Color themes aren’t available in Canva Docs, whiteboards, emails, or sheets. Use the color picker in the toolbar to apply your brand colors instead.
Fix elements that don't change color
If some elements don’t change color, check the element type. PNG and JPG images, charts, and locked elements won't update automatically. You can change these colors manually using the color picker.
If you don’t see suggested themes, check that your Brand Templates match your Brand Kit Fonts and Colors.
FAQs
How can I create a color theme?
You can create color themes from Brand Template suggestions or extract them from your existing designs. Creating themes from scratch isn’t available right now.
Where can I edit my color themes?
You can edit your color themes from Brand on your Homepage, not in the editor. Go to Brand, select Colors, then scroll to Themes to make changes.
Why do some text colors change and others don’t?
Canva automatically adjusts text colors to keep them readable, so different texts may use different colors from your theme. This means text colors aren’t mapped directly to your Brand Kit text styles.
How to see suggested color themes?
Suggested color themes appear when your Brand Templates align with your Brand Kit Fonts and Colors. You’ll see them in the Themes section of the Colors page.
If you’ve dismissed the suggestions banner, you can show it again:
- Go to the Themes section, then select (More options).
- Select Show suggested themes.
Suggested themes update automatically when new matching Brand Templates are added
What are the limits for color themes?
- Maximum number of color themes: 24
- Maximum combinations per theme: 12
Per combination:
- 1 background color.
- Up to 20 element colors.
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