Add and apply color themes
Apply coordinated colours to your design in one click using colour themes. Themes update your background, elements, and text together to keep your designs consistent.
Colour themes are different from brand colours. Brand colours are a palette, while themes define how those colours 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 colour theme to your design
Use your saved colour theme from your Brand Kit to quickly update your design.
- Open your design.
- Select Brand from the side panel.
- Under Colours, 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 Colours, 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 colour 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 and colours.
- Go to Brand
- Select Colours, then scroll to Themes
- Select a suggested theme
- Select Add to Brand Kit
From a design
Generate colour themes from your existing designs.
- Go to Brand.
- Select Colours, then scroll to Themes
- Select Generate.
- Search for a design or select one from the suggestions
- Select Generate colour themes
- Review the suggested combinations and how colours are assigned to backgrounds, elements, and text.
- Select a combination to customise
- Optional: Rename the theme or add guidelines.
- Select Add to Brand Kit
You can repeat this to add multiple theme variations.
See what colour themes work with
Colour 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 colours)
Colour themes aren’t available in Canva Docs, whiteboards, emails, or sheets. Use the colour picker in the toolbar to apply your brand colours instead.
Fix elements that don't change colour
If some elements don’t change colour, check the element type. PNG and JPG images, charts, and locked elements won't update automatically. You can change these colours manually using the colour picker.
If you don’t see suggested themes, check that your Brand Templates match your Brand Kit Fonts and Colours.
FAQs
How can I create a colour theme?
You can create colour 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 colour themes?
You can edit your colour themes from Brand on your Homepage, not in the editor. Go to Brand, select Colours, then scroll to Themes to make changes.
Why do some text colours change and others don’t?
Canva automatically adjusts text colours to keep them readable, so different texts may use different colours from your theme. This means text colours aren’t mapped directly to your Brand Kit text styles.
How to see suggested colour themes?
Suggested colour themes appear when your Brand Templates align with your Brand Kit Fonts and Colours. You’ll see them in the Themes section of the Colours 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 colour themes?
- Maximum number of colour themes: 24
- Maximum combinations per theme: 12
Per combination:
- 1 background colour.
- Up to 20 element colours.
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