Themes & Layout in Google Data Studio

Themes are a set of predefined color and style combinations you can apply to your reports. Applying a theme updates the style settings of your charts, tables, background color, and text, helping to ensure your reports are visually attractive and stylistically coherent.

The default theme

All new reports start with a default theme. The colors and style settings of this theme are designed to be both attractive and accessible to viewers with color blindness.

Apply a theme

  1. In the Layout and Theme panel:

    1. The Layout and Theme panel appears on the right whenever no components are selected.

    2. You can also click Layout and theme in the toolbar.

    3. In the THEME tab, click the theme you want to apply.

Create a custom theme

Create a custom theme by changing the current theme settings.

  1. Edit the report.

  2. Open the Layout and Theme panel.

  3. At the top of the panel, click Customize.

  4. Use the settings in the Edit theme panel to customize the theme.

Override theme settings in a chart

Changing an individual component’s style settings overrides the current theme settings. Those changes are preserved if you apply a new theme.

Reset a chart to the current theme

To restore a component you’ve changed back to the report theme:

  1. Edit the report.
  2. Select the component.
  3. In the properties panel on the right, select the STYLE tab.
  4. At the bottom of the panel, click Reset to report theme.

Resetting a chart to the report theme won’t reset any custom colors you’ve set in the dimension value color map.

Limits of themes

  • Only report editors can apply a theme to a report.

  • Themes apply to the entire report. It’s not possible to apply different themes on separate pages of a report.

  • You can have one custom theme at a time. Modifying an existing theme creates a new custom theme, overwriting any previous custom theme.

  • Currently, changing themes doesn’t override text boxes with custom colors.

  • Currently, custom themes aren’t shared across reports. To reuse a custom theme in another report, make a copy of the report with the custom theme.

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