Create and Deploy Color Palette in SharePoint

In this article we can explore how to create a color palette and deploy it.

Color Palette

A Color Palette is a combination of colors used in a SharePoint site. Each Master page contains multiple elements with color names. A color palette contains color values for these pre-defined names.

A Color Palette has the extension .spcolor.

the following is the content of a sample .spcolor file.

Color Palette code

Location of Color Palette File

The color palette file resides in the root site collection themes folder. You can access the location from Site Actions > Site Settings > Themes page.

web designer galleries

The following is the Themes page.

sharepoint theme gallery

Creating New Palette

You can open the themes gallery > 15 hive folder > download an existing .spcolor file. Later modify the color values depending on your needs.

Deploying New Palette

You can open the themes gallery > 15 hive folder > choose new document. In the appearing dialog choose the new spcolor file and upload it.

add new document

Once uploaded, you can see the new palette in the look and feel page.

sharepoint site setting

Editing files

We can open the .spcolor file in Notepad and edit the color hex values. Alternatively, there is a very good tool named Color Palette Tool that provides a graphical user interface in editing colors.

Color Palette Tool

Color Palette Tool provides a graphical user interface for editing colors in a color palette file.

Installation

The tool can be downloaded from:

Download SharePoint Color Palette Tool

After installation you can open it from the Start menu.

SharePoint color paletter

Color Slots and Buckets

There are 89 color slots for a SharePoint Color palette. In the default view colors are grouped as Buckets. Bucket is a grouping base on the same color.

Clicking on the color button we can get the color dialog.

SharePoint color paletter tool

Changing View

There are 3 views available:

Bucket View
UI Groups View
UI Type View

Changing View

Color Preview Slots

Towards the right bottom Color Preview Slots are available. The colors selected here will be displayed in the SharePoint color palette drop down list.

Layout

We can choose a layout from the preview pane.

page layout

Recolor

We can quickly create a new theme using the recolor option. Click on the color picker icon.

recolor

Choose the color from color picker and click the Recolor button. You will get a new theme based on the color selected.

select color for recolor

Saving

Once the new color palette is created we can save the changes into a .spcolor file using File > Save menu. the following is the contents of the .spcolor file.

note

Please note that the themes folder also contains font files.

References