Brand Kit Editor — Colors

The COLORS tab is the first tab in the sidebar and the most-used section in the editor. This is where everything visual in your decks gets its color from.

You'll work through these color groups, top to bottom:

• COLORS (the top row) — your primary brand palette, the colors the Design AI prioritizes across every slide.
• COLLECTION COLORS — sequences of colors used together for items like bullet points, pyramid sections, and icons (covered in detail on step 9).
• TEXT COLORS — five separate slots: Primary Dark, Primary Light, Secondary Dark, Secondary Light, and Hyperlinks.
• SPECIAL COLORS — Positive and Negative (used in charts, data slides, and status indicators).
• CHART COLORS — the is the palette your data visualizations cycle through.
• BACKGROUND COLORS — Light, Dark, and Accent backgrounds your team can switch between on any slide.
• BACKGROUND GRADIENTS — optional gradient backgrounds you can add to the team's library.
• BACKGROUND IMAGES — optional image backgrounds you can add for your team to apply to any slide.
• DEFAULT BACKGROUND — which of the above gets used by default on new slides.
• BACKGROUND EFFECT — None, Vignette, Gradient, Reverse, or Border, applied automatically to backgrounds.

To Note: Hover over the question mark icons before you change anything. Every color group has a small ? icon next to its label, and each one opens a tooltip that explains exactly how that color gets used in your decks.

How to add or edit your colors:

1. Click any existing color swatch to edit it, or click the blue + icon at the end of the row to add a new color.
2. A color picker opens with a gradient selector, a lightness slider, and a value field at the bottom.
3. Enter your color value. By default the field is set to HEX, but you can cycle to other formats using the small up/down arrow to the right of the input field. The picker supports three formats:
   • HEX — single field for the hex code (e.g. #FFFFFF)
   • RGBA — four separate fields for R, G, B, and A (alpha) values
   • HSLA — four separate fields for H, S, L, and A (alpha) values
4. Click anywhere outside the picker to close it. Your change is already saved to the theme, and the live preview reflects it immediately.
5. To remove a color, hover the swatch and click the small X that appears in the corner.

Reorder your colors to control Design AI priority

In both the COLORS row and the CHART COLORS row, the order of your colors matters. Beautiful.ai's Design AI uses the order as a priority list when it generates and styles slides:

• The first color is treated as your primary brand color and shows up most prominently (headlines, primary icons, hero shapes, emphasis text)
• The second color is your secondary, used for supporting visual elements
• Subsequent colors cycle in as accents, additional series in charts, and supporting decoration

To reorder your colors: 

1. Click and drag any color swatch to a new position in the row. 

2. The live preview updates immediately, so you can see how your slides shift as you experiment.

3. If your team's primary brand color is the second or third swatch in the row, drag it to the first position and watch your sample slides re-orient around it.

4. This applies to both the main COLORS palette (used everywhere in slide design) and the CHART COLORS palette (used specifically in data visualizations).

Note: If your decks have ever come out "almost on-brand but somehow "off," this is usually why. Most admins paste in their brand hex codes and move on without thinking about order. But if your secondary color happens to land in the first slot, the Design AI will treat it as primary across every slide. Take 30 seconds to drag your true primary brand color into position one. It's the single highest-leverage thing you can do in the Colors panel.