Documentation

Define Colors

Colors play an important role for the Look & Feel of your charts and dashboards. You can use them to highlight outliers in your data or to put an emphasis on related data series by assigning similar colors. You can customize and define individual colors for your data series when you create the chart in the Chart Creator. Follow the instructions below to learn how to edit the colors of your charts in datapine.

Change data series colors

 

  1. In your chart, right-click on a particular data series and select Advanced Options in the small popup. This will open the Chart Options on the right of the screen.
  2. Below the data series option, open the color picker by clicking on the color field. Either select a color from the predefined palette by simply clicking on one of the colors or define your own. Click the small Apply Button and the color will be populated to the data series.
  3. Save these changes to your chart by clicking Apply at the bottom of the chart options menu.

change data series color in datapine

 

Change the background and border colors

 

You may also easily change the general chart colors, such as background, border and gridline colors.

  1. In your Chart, click on the Chart Options in the right upper corner of the chart preview and then select Format Chart Area in the dropdown.
  2. In the Chart Options on the right, scroll down to Colors. You may now pick custom colors for your chart background, border and gridlines.

THE COLOR THEORY

 

When you create charts and dashboards, the colors you choose and use can be as impactful as your data. The human brain is so visual that you must remain aware of this kind of “details”, that can take away the main message of your dashboards if you are not careful. According to which story you want to say, the psychology of color will influence it, as each of them sends a message.   Keep in mind, at any time, that 0,5% of women et 8% of men are color-blind. That means that they can perceive a color and changes in brightness, but not always the different shades of that color. That is why it is crucial to avoid coinciding shades of colors like red and solid pink, or grey and white for example. What you should think about when choosing your charts’ colors is their complementarity: to do so, you can help yourself with the famous color wheel, declining all the shades from the three primary ones (red, blue, yellow). Learn more about color theory in our blog post: how to make a stunning dashboard.