# Color palettes and palette creator in Tableau | Tableau 2025.3

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2025-12-05
- **Format:** Video · 4 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation
- **Tools:** Tableau (colour palettes, formatting)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/color-palettes-and-palette-creator-in-tableau--tableau-20253
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SG7m4PiYKg

I walk through the new workbook-wide colour palette features in Tableau 2025.3. I show the enhanced palette creator for building custom categorical, diverging and sequential palettes, then apply them across an entire workbook from the Format Workbook tab.

## Key takeaways

- Tableau 2025.3 adds workbook-wide colour palettes (categorical, diverging and sequential) that you can set in one place via Format, Workbook.
- The colour palette editor now includes a 'create custom color palette' option at the bottom of the automatic pane, with a nicer colour picker and the ability to paste swatches.
- You can base a new custom palette on an existing one, name it, add swatches, and it appears at the bottom of the palette list.
- A reset-to-default dot lets you instantly revert a workbook-wide palette change if you don't like it.
- Combined with the earlier import/export custom themes feature, you can now manage fonts, styles and palettes together for different scenarios.

## Chapters

- 0:01 Workbook-wide categorical palettes
- 0:46 Creating a custom colour palette
- 1:52 Applying palettes across the workbook
- 2:44 Themes and palettes together

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/color-palettes-and-palette-creator-in-tableau--tableau-20253

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena