What is a good color palette for charts?

A good chart palette is short and mostly neutral: one accent for emphasis, a small set of clearly different category colors, a light-to-dark scale for ordered numbers, and a couple of status colors for good and bad. Text needs sufficient contrast, chart colors need clear separation, and labels should carry meaning even when color cannot.

How many colors should a chart use?

Six to eight category colors is the practical ceiling; past that, colors get hard to tell apart. If you have more categories, group the smaller ones into an Other bucket or use one highlight color against gray.

How do I make a colorblind-safe palette?

Never rely on hue alone. Give colors different lightness as well as different hue, avoid red and green as the only difference, prefer blue and orange for good and bad, and always add a label, icon, or line style so meaning survives in grayscale. This tool simulates common color-vision differences, adjusts category clashes, and reports any remaining warnings.

Can I use this palette in Excel and Power BI?

Yes. You can download a real Office theme file (.thmx) that sets Excel's and PowerPoint's chart colors, a Power BI theme JSON, or CSS variables and a JSON file for the web and other tools.

Excel Color Palette Generator for Dashboards

1

Build from your brand

Type a HEX code, pick a color by eye, or pull one from a logo, website, or PowerPoint. Color Studio builds the rest of the system around it. Add a second or third color only when they are genuinely part of the brand.

Your colors. We give each one the role it fits best, not the order you add them. Your main color gets first shot at the accent, and the breakdown below shows what we did with each.

No brand color? Start from one of these and make it yours:

Or pull it from something you already have:

Drag a logo or screenshot here, or choose a file.

Read right here in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.

We fetch the page and read its brand colors and logo. Big sites work best.

Drop a .pptx here, or choose a file.

We read the deck's theme colors right in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.

2

Your vibe

To choose your colors we need to know a few things. Use the controls to shape the look.

What kind of palette do you want? Defaults are set based on your brand colors but adjust as necessary.

How many chart colors? 6

Most charts only need four to six. Past that, colors start blurring together.

How bold should the colors be? Balanced

Muted & corporate ↔ bright & punchy.

Background

Most enterprise brands and large corporate brands opt for light. Dark is fun for on-screen but bad for printouts

3

Take it with you

This is everything you need to take this reporting and use it in your real work.

📄 Takeaway guide

Your palette + plain instructions and guidance on one page. Save it as a PDF from the print dialog.

📊 PowerPoint

The same guide as an editable slide deck, in your colors. It's built on the theme file, so it shows the colors working in a real PowerPoint.

🟩 Excel / Office theme

A theme file Excel and PowerPoint read directly. To use it in Excel: Page Layout → Themes → Browse for Themes.

🟨 Power BI theme

Import in Power BI: View → Themes → Browse for themes.

🌐 Web / code

CSS variables and a JSON file, or copy the raw hex list.

Want dashboards that already look like this?

Turn this palette into a reusable reporting system with The Excel Theme Guide, or have me design your report.
Tutorials and free Excel files: join the newsletter.

Questions

Is it free? Can I use these at work?

Yes, and please do. It's completely free for personal, educational, and non-commercial use, so learn with it, build your own dashboards, teach a class, go for it. The one ask: if you want to use what the tool makes (the theme files, the exports, the takeaway docs) in a commercial product or a paid client deliverable, . And to be clear, that's about the tool and its files, not the colors themselves. You can't copyright a handful of colors, and honestly I wouldn't want to. It's the generated files and outputs that carry a commercial license, never the hues.

Do I need to know color theory?

No. Pick a color you like and read the plain-language note under each set of colors. It tells you what the color is for and where it goes in Excel. Want the reasoning? Open any "See it in a real chart" example, or the "why these exact shades" note at the end.

Does anything get uploaded?

Images and PowerPoint files are read right in your browser. They never leave your device. Only the "Website" option fetches a page for you (that has to run on a server to get around browser security), and it sends back just colors and a couple of image links.

What's with the colorblind stuff?

About 1 in 12 men can't reliably tell red from green. If your colors only differ by hue, those readers can't tell your series apart, so the tool simulates common color-vision differences, adjusts category clashes, and reports the result. Still add a label or icon; never lean on color alone. If a chart color sits too close to the background, use the outline recommendation shown with your palette.

Which export do I want?

In Excel or PowerPoint? Grab the .thmx theme. Power BI? The .json. Handing colors to a developer? CSS or JSON. Just want to keep it? The PDF or PowerPoint takeaway. More on the thinking in the color palette guide.

Excel color palette generator
for dashboards & reports

Use a ready-made palette

Build from my brand