A chart's colors come from two palettes: the theme palette you set in the Theme Editor, and the palette that colors departments. A theme carries ten named slots. Five are the colors you set, and five are fixed.
Change a color
- Open Themes and choose Edit.
- Open Colors. The palette shows the five colors you set: Primary, Secondary, Accent 1, Accent 2, and Tertiary.
- Choose a swatch, pick the color you want, then confirm it.
- Check the sample Preview.
- Choose Apply to chart.
The editor marks your work as Unapplied changes until you apply it, so the chart keeps its current colors while you edit. Reset returns the draft to this session's starter. Cancel closes the editor without applying the draft. Neither command is the people-history Undo button, and ordinary Undo will not restore a theme after you apply one.
What the ten colors are
A theme's palette has ten named slots. Five are the colors you set:
- Primary
- Secondary
- Accent 1
- Accent 2
- Tertiary
Five are fixed: White, Grey 1, Grey 2, Grey 3, and Black.
Slots are named addresses, not a limit on how many colors a chart may show. Two slots may hold the same color, including setting one of the five to white or black. Studio does not require five different colors, and a chart can repeat a color as often as it needs to.
Why some colors are fixed
Field badges and department chips need small inks that stay legible under their text, and a card or connector sometimes needs plain white or black. The fixed slots keep those common colors available by name, so using one does not spend one of the five colors you chose for the brand.
You can point an element at White, a Grey, or Black. The palette shows the fixed five below the colors you set, marked so it is clear they are references rather than choices: they have no picker and no remove button, and their values never change.
Point an element at a color
Each colored element has one control, and the color it paints is shown in it. Open it and choose a source: Custom color, one of the five palette colors, or one of the fixed colors above. Choosing a palette slot is the whole change, because the slot already is the color. Only Custom color opens the picker. Elements bound to a palette slot follow that slot, so changing Primary updates everything assigned to Primary. A custom color belongs to that element alone.
Where department colors come from
Departments come from the chart itself. Each person carries a Department value in People, and the chart's departments are those values. The Theme Editor does not create departments. It decides whether they are colored and where their colors come from.
- Open Themes > Edit > Colors.
- Set Color variation to By department.
- Choose how the ten department colors are filled under Palette method: Preset colors for the built-in set, Reuse your theme colors to follow the colors you set above, Ten distinct colors, or One color, light to dark. The ten slots fill in, and while a method is chosen they are read-only. Choose Custom to edit them by hand.
- Choose Department accent under Cards to decide what changes: Stripe, Edges, Fill, or Chip.
When department coloring is on, a new or renamed department takes the next color in the chosen list, and the departments already on the chart keep the colors they have. Adding, renaming, or moving people does not recolor the rest of the chart.
If a department's color looks wrong, check the person's Department value in People first. If the department name is right, look at Themes > Edit > Colors.
Change the rest of the theme
Colors are one part of the chart's theme. How to customize and reuse an org chart theme covers previewing a starter theme, cards, text, avatars, connectors, and copying a theme to another chart.