Themes in Power BI are powerful tools that allow analysts to create consistent, professional-looking reports by controlling the visual appearance of all elements across your dashboards and reports. A theme defines colors, fonts, backgrounds, and other visual properties that apply uniformly througho…Themes in Power BI are powerful tools that allow analysts to create consistent, professional-looking reports by controlling the visual appearance of all elements across your dashboards and reports. A theme defines colors, fonts, backgrounds, and other visual properties that apply uniformly throughout your work.
To apply a built-in theme, navigate to the View tab in Power BI Desktop and select Themes from the ribbon. You can choose from various pre-designed options like default, colorblind-friendly, or high contrast themes. These provide instant visual transformations while maintaining readability and accessibility standards.
Customizing themes takes your reports to the next level. You can modify existing themes or create entirely new ones by editing JSON files. The theme JSON structure includes properties such as dataColors (the palette used for chart series), background colors, foreground settings, tableAccent for matrix and table visuals, and typography specifications including font family, size, and weight.
To create a custom theme, start by exporting a current theme from the View tab, then edit the JSON file using any text editor. Key sections to customize include the name property, dataColors array containing hex color codes, visualStyles for specific visual type formatting, and text classes for consistent typography across headers, labels, and values.
Once your custom theme JSON is complete, import it through View > Themes > Browse for themes. The changes apply across all report pages, ensuring brand consistency. You can also share theme files with team members to maintain organizational standards.
Best practices include limiting your color palette to 6-8 distinct colors, ensuring sufficient contrast for accessibility, using brand-appropriate fonts that remain readable at various sizes, and testing themes across different visual types. Custom themes significantly reduce formatting time on future reports while delivering polished, cohesive presentations that strengthen your analytical storytelling and organizational branding.
Apply and Customize Themes in Power BI
Why It Is Important
Themes in Power BI are essential for creating consistent, professional-looking reports that align with organizational branding. They save significant time by allowing you to apply uniform formatting across all visuals simultaneously rather than formatting each visual individually. Understanding themes is crucial for the PL-300 exam as it falls under the visualization competency area and demonstrates your ability to create polished, enterprise-ready reports.
What Are Themes?
A theme in Power BI is a collection of formatting settings that define the visual appearance of your report. Themes control:
• Colors - Data colors, background colors, and foreground colors • Text settings - Font family, size, and color for titles, labels, and cards • Visual elements - Borders, shadows, and spacing • Background settings - Page and visual backgrounds • Filter pane styling - Appearance of the filter pane
Power BI offers built-in themes and supports custom JSON theme files for complete control over report aesthetics.
How Themes Work
Themes work through a hierarchical system:
1. Accessing Themes - Navigate to View tab > Themes in Power BI Desktop
2. Built-in Themes - Power BI includes several pre-built themes like Default, City Park, Classroom, and Colorblind Safe
3. Custom Themes - You can create custom themes by: • Using Customize current theme option in the View tab • Creating a JSON file manually or using theme generators • Importing existing JSON theme files
4. Theme Application - When applied, themes affect all existing and new visuals in the report
5. Theme Override - Individual visual formatting can still override theme settings when needed
JSON Theme Structure
Custom themes use JSON format with key properties:
• name - Theme identifier • dataColors - Array of hex color codes for data series • background - Default background color • foreground - Default text color • tableAccent - Accent color for tables • visualStyles - Granular control over specific visual types
Steps to Apply and Customize Themes
1. Open Power BI Desktop and load your report 2. Go to View tab on the ribbon 3. Click the Themes dropdown 4. Select a built-in theme or click Browse for themes to import a JSON file 5. To customize, select Customize current theme 6. Modify Name and colors, Text, Visuals, and Page settings 7. Click Apply to see changes 8. Use Save current theme to export as JSON for reuse
Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Apply and Customize Themes
• Remember the location - Themes are accessed from the View tab, not the Format pane
• Know the file format - Custom themes use JSON format with the .json extension
• Understand hierarchy - Theme settings apply globally, but individual visual formatting takes precedence when manually set
• Accessibility awareness - Know that Power BI includes a Colorblind Safe theme for accessibility compliance
• Organizational deployment - Themes can be shared across the organization for brand consistency
• Watch for keywords - Questions mentioning consistent formatting, branding, or company colors typically relate to themes
• JSON properties - Familiarize yourself with basic JSON properties like dataColors and visualStyles
• Differentiate from templates - Themes control appearance only; templates include data model and visuals
• Export capability - Remember you can export customized themes for use in other reports