Blue is the most common colour in business presentations for good reasons: it reads as calm and trustworthy, it works with photos, and dark blue carries white text well. But a deck does not become professional by being blue. It becomes professional when every colour has a job, the same job on every slide.
Step 1: give colours roles
A presentation needs four to six colours, each with one role:
| Role | Used for | Blue example |
|---|---|---|
| Background | Slide grounds | White #FFFFFF or very light grey #F5F7FA |
| Text | Body text and titles | Near-black navy #14213D |
| Primary | Title slides, headers, main shapes | Strong blue #1F4E99 |
| Secondary | Supporting shapes, second chart series | Light blue #8FB3E8 |
| Accent | The one thing that matters on a slide | Warm orange #F28C28 |
| Neutral | Lines, grid, de-emphasised data | Grey #A0A7B4 |
The accent is the key to the whole scheme. In a blue deck a contrasting warm colour — orange, coral, yellow — shows the audience where to look: the bar that matters, the number to remember. Use it sparingly; if it appears everywhere, it means nothing.
Step 2: choose the scheme
- Start from the brand. If your organisation has colours, use them for primary and accent. Ask for the hex codes, not a screenshot.
- Monochrome plus accent. Several shades of one hue (dark, medium, light blue) plus one contrasting accent. Calm and very hard to get wrong.
- Complementary. Two colours opposite on the colour wheel — blue and orange — for strong contrast. Use one as primary, the other only as accent.
- Analogous. Neighbouring hues — blue, teal, green — for harmony. Add a dark neutral for text.
- Dark mode. A deep navy or charcoal background with white text and bright accents. Good in dark rooms and on screens, harder on projectors in bright rooms and in print.
Step 3: set the theme colours in PowerPoint
Theme colours are the twelve colours of the colour picker’s top row and its tints. Everything that uses them — text, shapes, tables, charts, SmartArt — changes when the theme changes. Setting them once is what keeps a deck consistent.
Create custom theme coloursWindows and Mac
Open Customize Colors
On the Design tab, click the arrow of the Variants group and choose Colors → Customize Colors (on a Mac: Design → Variants → Colors → Customize Colors).
Design → Variants → Colors → Customize Colors Set text and background colours
Text/Background – Dark 1 is the main text colour (your navy), Light 1 the main background (white). Dark 2 and Light 2 are alternatives for dark and light slides.
Create New Theme Colors dialog Set the accents
Accent 1 is your primary colour — it is the first chart series and the default shape fill. Put the secondary as Accent 2 and the warm highlight as Accent 3; fill the rest with useful tints. Click each, choose More Colors → Custom and enter the hex code.
Name and save
Name the scheme (“Company blue”) and click Save. It appears at the top of Colors for every deck on this computer.
Recolour stray elements
Elements formatted with Standard Colors or More Colors do not follow the theme. Select them and pick from the Theme Colors row instead.
Theme colours in Google Slides
Edit theme colours in Google SlidesGoogle Slides
Open the theme builder
Choose Slide → Edit theme.
Slide → Edit theme Open Colours
Click Colours in the toolbar of the theme builder. A panel lists the theme colours: Text and background (dark and light) and Accent 1 to Accent 6, plus link colours.
Set each colour
Pick a colour name in the list, then enter the hex code under Custom. Close the builder; shapes, text and charts using theme colours update.
Step 4: check contrast and colour blindness
Text must stand out clearly from its background. The web accessibility guidelines (WCAG) ask for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 : 1 for normal text and 3 : 1 for large text; free contrast checkers compute it from two hex codes. On projectors, aim higher — they wash colours out.
- Never mid-blue text on dark blue. Use white or near-white on dark, near-black on light.
- No text directly on busy photos. Put a semi-transparent dark or light band behind it.
- Do not rely on red versus green alone. About one in twelve men has some form of colour blindness; add labels, patterns or position.
- Check in greyscale. If two chart series look the same in grey, they will be confused by some of the audience.
Review → Check Accessibility in PowerPoint flags hard-to-read text contrast among other issues.
Step 5: colour in charts and tables
Charts take their series colours from Accent 1, 2, 3 and so on, in order. That is why the order of accents matters. For a chart that makes one point, set every series to the neutral grey and give only the important one the accent — a technique explained in our guide to presenting data. Tables take header and banded-row colours from the theme too; see table border colours for the formatting steps.
Colour mistakes to avoid
- A new colour per slide. Variety reads as inconsistency.
- Pure black on pure white everywhere. Slightly softened text (a very dark navy or grey) is easier on the eyes.
- Gradients with many stops. One subtle gradient on a title slide is enough.
- Colours picked from a logo by eye. Ask for the exact values.
- Pictures that fight the scheme. A deck of cool blues with warm, saturated stock photos looks patched together; choose pictures with matching tones, or use them in black and white.
Five ready colour schemes to start from
If you have no brand colours, these combinations work for most business decks. Enter the hex codes as theme colours and adjust from there.
| Scheme | Background | Text | Primary | Accent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Classic blue | #FFFFFF | #14213D | #1F4E99 | #F28C28 |
| Navy dark mode | #0F1B2D | #FFFFFF | #4C8DF6 | #FFC857 |
| Teal and coral | #F7F9F9 | #1B2A2F | #127C83 | #FF6F59 |
| Graphite and lime | #FFFFFF | #222222 | #4A4F57 | #A6CE39 |
| Warm neutral | #FAF7F2 | #2E2A24 | #8C6A4F | #D9482B |
For each, add a lighter tint of the primary as secondary and a mid grey as neutral. The tints PowerPoint generates below each theme colour in the colour picker are usually good enough for backgrounds of boxes and table rows.
Designs for this kind of deck
Every design brings its own colours, fonts and layouts to the whole deck.
Colour schemes in ExpertSlides
In ExpertSlides colours have roles by design. Every text, shape, table and chart of a deck takes its colour from the deck’s colours — background, highlights, text — so a deck is consistent from the first slide. Each design comes in several styles, colour and font pairings made for it, and the Design tab of the side panel changes the deck’s colours or applies a ready-made palette to every slide at once, charts and tables included. Pictures generated for the deck can use the theme colours too.
For a company’s own colours, a brand kit (Pro and Business) reads them from a brand guide, a PowerPoint template or your website and puts them on every new deck, together with fonts and logo. The PowerPoint export (Pro and Business) writes the colours into the file, so the deck stays on-brand when someone continues in PowerPoint.
Related: presentation design rules and inverting image colours. Browse blue and other designs in Design Templates, or set up your brand kit.
Questions, answered
How many colours should a presentation use?
Four to six, each with a role: background, text, a primary colour, a secondary colour, one accent for what matters, and a neutral grey.
How do I change the colour scheme in PowerPoint?
On the Design tab open the Variants group and choose Colors. Pick a built-in scheme or Customize Colors to enter your own hex codes for the text, background and accent colours.
What colours go well with blue in a presentation?
White and light greys for backgrounds, a dark navy for text, a lighter blue as secondary, and a warm accent such as orange, coral or yellow to highlight key points.
How do I make sure text is readable?
Use dark text on light backgrounds or light text on dark ones, aim for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1, avoid text directly on busy photos, and check the deck with Review, Check Accessibility.
How do colours work in ExpertSlides?
Every text, shape, table and chart follows the deck’s colours, so changing them or applying a palette in the Design tab recolours every slide. Brand kits bring your company colours.
