Themes and Branding
Themes and Branding is a Setup feature in Lightning Experience that lets administrators control the visual appearance of an org.
Definition
Themes and Branding is a Setup feature in Lightning Experience that lets administrators control the visual appearance of an org. From one page you choose an active theme, and a theme bundles a color palette plus brand images such as a logo and a loading-page image. Those choices flow into the global header, navigation bar, tabs, buttons, and page backgrounds that users see every day.
Every org ships with the built-in Lightning Blue theme. You can switch to another built-in option or build a custom theme that carries your company colors and logo. Only one theme is active at a time, and the active theme applies across Lightning Experience for all users in that org.
How a Theme Bundles Color and Brand Images
Where it lives and what it changes
You reach the page from Setup by typing Themes and Branding into Quick Find, then selecting Themes and Branding. The page lists the available themes, shows which one is active, and gives you a New Theme button to create your own. Built-in themes ship with Salesforce, and you cannot edit or delete them. Custom themes are yours to edit, clone, and remove. A theme is more than a logo swap. The active theme drives the brand color that appears in the global header, the navigation bar, tab highlights, and buttons. It also sets the page background, which can stay white, switch to a flat brand color, or use an uploaded background image. The brand image you assign shows on the Lightning Experience loading page, so the first thing a user sees while the app boots already reflects your company. Because so many surfaces read from one theme, a single configuration change updates the look across the whole org rather than page by page.
The color palette and how Salesforce generates it
When you build a custom theme, you pick a small number of core colors rather than coloring every element by hand. You set a primary color, a header color, and a background color, and Salesforce generates a full brand-based palette from those values. That generated palette is what fills the many shades the interface needs for hover states, borders, and accents. Themes are built on the Salesforce Lightning Design System, the same design framework that styles standard components. That is why your colors land consistently on native screens instead of clashing with them. Salesforce intends the generated palette to stay readable, so the defaults aim for usable contrast out of the box. You can override the generated values if your brand demands an exact hex code, but manual overrides can break contrast. Light text on a light header or dark text on a dark background becomes hard to read, and that hurts users with low vision most. The safe move is to set your two or three core colors, let the system generate the rest, then check the result before activating.
Brand images, logos, and sizing
A theme can hold several images, and each one has a job. The header logo is the most visible. Salesforce expects a brand image sized for the header, and a common working size is 600 by 120 pixels so the logo sits cleanly in the top bar without stretching. You can also upload a page-background image, which replaces the flat background color across record pages and list views. The loading-page brand image is a separate slot. It appears on the splash screen while Lightning Experience loads, which is a small but high-frequency moment that every user hits at sign-in. A default group banner can also be set so collaboration spaces carry the same look. Keep image files reasonably small so pages stay fast, and test each image on real screens. A logo that looks crisp on a designer's monitor can render muddy on a laptop or a phone. Because images sit inside the theme record, swapping them later is just an edit to the active theme, not a project that touches many pages.
Activating, previewing, and switching themes
Themes follow a simple lifecycle. You create a theme, fill in its colors and images, preview it, and then activate it when it looks right. Activation is the switch that makes a theme live for every user in the org, and only one theme can be active at any moment. Activating a new theme automatically deactivates the previous one, so there is no risk of two themes fighting. Preview matters because the swatches in the editor do not tell the whole story. A color that reads well as a small chip can feel heavy once it fills the entire header and navigation bar. Treat preview as a real review step, not a formality. A practical pattern is to keep your live theme untouched, clone it or build a fresh candidate, refine the candidate, preview it on a few record types, and only then activate. If the new look causes complaints, you can reactivate the prior theme in seconds, which makes branding changes low risk compared with most Setup work.
Scope: where the active theme does and does not reach
Themes and Branding governs Lightning Experience in the core app, so it covers the desktop experience your internal users live in. It does not restyle every Salesforce surface. The Setup area itself keeps a consistent administrative look regardless of the active theme, which keeps configuration screens predictable for admins. Experience Cloud sites are branded separately. Those public and partner sites use their own branding in Experience Builder, including branding sets and theme layouts, so a customer portal does not inherit your internal org theme. The Salesforce mobile app also handles brand color through its own settings rather than reading the desktop theme directly. Individual Lightning apps add another layer, since each app can carry its own color and logo that override the org theme while that app is open. Knowing these boundaries prevents wasted effort. If you want a portal or a specific app branded, you configure it in that surface, not on the Themes and Branding page.
Why a small change pays off, and how to manage it
Branding is cheap to set up and easy to undervalue, but it changes how people relate to the tool. Software that wears the company logo and colors reads as an internal system, while a default install can feel like a generic outside app users are forced to open. That perception affects adoption. A platform that looks like part of the company tends to get treated as part of the workflow. Manage it like any other configuration. Spend the time during initial rollout, since the look you ship on day one is what users anchor to. Revisit the theme after a company rebrand so the org does not drift out of sync with the rest of the business. Because themes are metadata, you can move a tested theme between sandbox and production through your normal deployment process rather than rebuilding it by hand in each org. Keep the palette to a couple of core colors, favor light backgrounds with clearly contrasting text, and the result stays clean and accessible instead of loud.
How to brand your org with a custom theme
Activate a built-in theme or build a custom one so Lightning Experience reflects your company colors and logo. You configure everything from the Themes and Branding Setup page, and the active theme applies to all users in the org.
- Open the Themes and Branding page
From Setup, type Themes and Branding into Quick Find and select it. Review the list of available themes and note which one is active.
- Create a custom theme
Click New Theme. Give it a name, then set your primary, header, and background colors. Let Salesforce generate the brand-based palette from those core colors.
- Add your brand images
Upload a header logo, an optional page-background image, and a loading-page brand image. Use a logo sized for the header, around 600 by 120 pixels, so it fits without stretching.
- Preview and activate
Preview the theme to see the colors fill the header and navigation. When it looks right, activate it. Activating the new theme automatically deactivates the previous one for the whole org.
The three core colors you choose; Salesforce builds the rest of the palette from them.
The brand image shown in the global header across Lightning Experience.
The image users see on the splash screen while Lightning Experience loads.
Keep it white, use a flat brand color, or upload a background image for record pages and lists.
- Only one theme is active at a time; activating a new theme switches off the old one for every user.
- Overriding the generated palette can break contrast and make text hard to read, especially for low-vision users.
- The active theme does not restyle Setup, Experience Cloud sites, or the mobile app; those are branded separately.
- Built-in themes like Lightning Blue cannot be edited or deleted; clone the look into a custom theme if you need changes.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Themes and Branding.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Themes and Branding.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
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