Add color and design to your slides with Themes
PowerPoint provides a variety of design themes—including coordinated color schemes, backgrounds, font styles, and placement of placeholders.
Note: You may be looking to learn about using the Design Ideas button available for Microsoft 365 subscribers. See about working with PowerPoint Designer.
Try it!
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Pick a theme when you do File > New to start a new presentation.
These built-in themes are great for widescreen (16:9) and standard screen (4:3) presentations. To change the slide size, see Change the size of your slides.
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If offered, choose a color variation, and then select Create.
If you change your mind, you can always change the theme or variant later on the Design tab.
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On the Design tab, pick a theme with the colors, fonts, and effects that you like.
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To apply a different color variation of a particular theme, in the Variants group, pick a variant.
Note: If you don't see any variants, it could be because you're using a custom theme, an older theme designed for earlier versions of PowerPoint, or because you imported some slides from another presentation with an older or custom theme.
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Select right arrow in the Variants group to select different Colors, Fonts, Effects, or Background Styles and choose from built-in options or customize your own.
Create and save a custom theme
You can create a custom theme by modifying an existing theme or by starting from scratch with a blank presentation.
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Select your first slide, and then on the Design tab, select the down arrow in the Variants group.
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Select Colors, Fonts, Effects, or Background Styles and choose from built-in options or customize your own.
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When you're done customizing styles, select the down arrow in the Themes group, and then select Save Current Theme.
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Give your theme a name, and select Save. By default, it is save with your other PowerPoint themes and will be available in the Themes group under a Custom header.