This post give hints about how to choose the color palette in Microsoft Office.
Understanding the Function of each Colors
When you define the color palette in Microsoft Office, you need to choose 12 different colors.
Colors to be set:
- Text/background – dark 1
- Text/background – clear 1
- Text/background – dark 2
- Text/background – clear 2
- Emphasis 1
- Emphasis 2
- Emphasis 3
- Emphasis 4
- Emphasis 5
- Emphasis 6
- Hyperlink
- Visited hyperlink
When painting charts, the emphasis colors 1-6 are used in ascending order, only when needed. For example, if only 2 colors are used within the chart, only emphasis colors 1 and 2 are used.
Only 8 colors are shown in the color palette preview. They are Dark 1 (TBC), Clear 1 (TBC) and Emphasis 1-6.
Colors that you want to see more in your palette should have a lower number.
Emphasis 1 is the one used as default in Word headings. Think which color do you want to see in a document as heading when selecting the color for emphasis 1.
These are some hints about colors (selection / settings screens):
- Background 1 / Text/background – Dark 1: Main background color. It is usually white (#000000).
- Text 1 / Text/background – Light 1: Main text color. It is usually black (#F000000)
- Background 2 / Text/background – Light 2: Alternative light color. It is the background color if , or the text color. It is also used as the 2nd accent color in Excel. It should be slightly darker than background 1, and not white. It is often gray.
- Text 2 / Text/background – Dark 2: Alternative dark color. It is also used as the 1st accent color in Excel.
- Accent 1-6: Colors used in charts, in availability order.
The selection colors considers that both text+background combinations 1 and 2 are light themes. In case we want a dark theme we must play by swapping the default background and text colors.
The PowerPoint color settings sample preview can be misleading because it mixes 1 and 2 color groups and uses a dark theme in one of them, so I do not recommend to rely to select the colors based on the combinations shown on this preview.
There is a contradiction of difference of criteria between the settings and the selection, because what looks as the background in the dark theme will be actually the text 2 color, and the same for the text color in the dark theme that will be the background 2 color.