Power BI offers a powerful feature called Themes that lets you customize the look and feel of your reports. By using themes, you can apply consistent colors, fonts, and styles throughout your report, giving it a clean and professional appearance.
Themes make your reports more attractive, easier to read, and help maintain consistent branding across your organization.
With the latest Power BI and Microsoft Fabric updates, themes have become even more powerful. Organizations can now centrally manage themes, and Copilot can automatically apply your organization's default theme when generating reports, helping ensure a consistent look across both manually created and AI-generated reports.
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What is a Power BI Theme?
In Power BI, a theme is a JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) file that defines the visual elements of a report, such as colors, fonts, and default formatting. A JSON file is essentially a set of instructions that tells Power BI how your reports should look.
Themes offer a convenient way to change the overall style of a report. Instead of formatting each visual individually, you can customize colors, typography, and visual styles once and apply them consistently across your entire report, creating a professional and visually appealing design.
Power BI themes give users the flexibility to create consistent, attractive, and informative reports with minimal effort. They can also define default formatting for many visual types, making it easier to maintain a standardized look across multiple reports. In Microsoft Fabric, themes also integrate with Copilot. If an administrator has configured a default Organizational Theme, Copilot automatically applies it when generating reports, helping maintain consistent branding across both manually created and AI-generated reports.
Types of Power BI Themes
Power BI provides three types of themes that help you customize the appearance of your reports:
- Built-in Themes
- Custom Themes
- Organizational Themes (New)
Built-in Themes
Power BI provides a variety of built-in themes that you can apply instantly to change the appearance of your reports. These themes include pre-defined colors, fonts, and styles, making it easy to create a professional-looking report with just a few clicks.
Custom Themes
Unlike built-in themes, custom themes are created by users. They allow you to customize colors, fonts, and other visual settings to match your organization's branding or your personal preferences. Custom themes can also be saved and reused across multiple reports.
Organizational Themes (New)
Organizational Themes are managed centrally by a Power BI or Microsoft Fabric administrator. Instead of each report author importing a theme manually, the administrator uploads a JSON theme file and makes it available across the organization.
Once configured and enabled, these themes automatically appear in Power BI Desktop for report authors in the organization. This helps maintain consistent branding across reports. Report authors can apply organizational themes, while only administrators can create, update, or manage them.
Good to Know: An administrator can also configure an Organizational Theme as the default theme for Copilot. When Copilot generates a new report, it automatically applies the organization's branding and colors if a default Organizational Theme has been configured. Otherwise, Copilot uses the default Power BI theme.
How Do I Use Built-in Themes in Power BI?
Follow these steps to apply a built-in theme:
- Launch Power BI Desktop.
- Go to the View tab and click the drop-down arrow in the Themes section.
- Select any built-in theme to apply it instantly to your report.
How Do I Create or Customize a New Theme?
To create a custom theme, open Power BI Desktop, go to the View tab, click the Themes drop-down, and select Customize current theme.
This opens the Customize theme pane, where you can configure colors, text, visuals, pages, and other report formatting options.
Name and Colors
Choose the report name and customize the eight primary theme colors to match your branding or design preferences.
Text
Customize font styles, sizes, and colors for titles, labels, tables, and other report text.
Visuals
Change the appearance of visuals, including background color, borders, headers, and tooltips.
Page
Customize the report page by changing the wallpaper and page background.
Filter Pane
Modify the colors, fonts, and style of the filter pane to match the rest of your report.
After making your changes, click Apply to use the customized theme.
How Do I Save or Export a Customized Theme?
After customizing your theme, you can save it for future use.
- Go to the View tab and select Save current theme.
- Power BI exports the theme as a JSON file. You can reuse this file in other reports or share it with colleagues to maintain consistent branding across projects.
Note: You can also create JSON theme files using the PowerBI.tips Theme Generator or other community theme-building tools.
Theme Gallery
The Microsoft Fabric Community Theme Gallery contains a collection of community-created report themes that you can download and use in your Power BI reports.
To use a theme from the gallery:
- Visit the Microsoft Fabric Community Theme Gallery.
- Browse the available themes and download the desired .json theme file.
- Open Power BI Desktop.
- Go to the View tab.
- Click the Themes drop-down.
- Select Browse for themes.
- Select the downloaded .json file to apply it to your report.
If your organization has Organizational Themes configured by an administrator, they also appear in the Themes menu in Power BI Desktop, making them easy for report authors to apply.
You can also share your own custom theme with the community by selecting Submit a report theme and signing in with your Microsoft account.
How Do I Import Theme Files?
Power BI allows you to import existing theme files and apply them to your reports.
Follow these steps:
- Go to the View tab.
- Click the Themes drop-down.
- Select Browse for themes.
- Browse to the JSON theme file on your computer.
- Select the file and click Open.
- Power BI displays a confirmation message and immediately applies the imported colors, fonts, and styles to your report.
Themes and Copilot
Power BI Themes now work with Copilot. When Copilot creates a report from a natural language prompt, it automatically applies your organization's default theme if one has been configured by an administrator. Otherwise, it uses the default Power BI theme.
This helps keep both manually created and AI-generated reports consistent with your organization's branding and design.
Conclusion
Power BI Themes make it easy to create visually appealing and consistent reports by applying colors, fonts, and formatting across your entire report. Whether you use built-in themes, create your own custom themes, or apply organizational themes, they help maintain a professional look while saving time. With support for reusable JSON files and integration with Microsoft Fabric and Copilot, Power BI Themes have become an essential feature for building modern, consistent, and branded reports.
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