SharePoint: Build Custom Themes Fast

Key insights

• Brand Center
  Central hub in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center where admins enable and manage organization-wide themes and fonts.
  Enable the Brand Center for your tenant to control branding from one place.
• Custom Theme
  Create themes using your brand colors (enter hex codes or use a slider) and combine up to 16 color slots for fine control.
  Build themes at the tenant or site level without code or custom development.
• Change the look
  Site owners apply themes from Site Settings using the “Change the look” option to update site colors and appearance instantly.
  The same theme can be rolled out across multiple sites for a consistent experience.
• Custom Fonts
  Admins package fonts in the Brand Center, choosing built-in Microsoft fonts or uploading custom fonts.
  Site owners apply those font packages the same way they apply themes to keep typography consistent.
• Multi-Colored Themes
  New support for multi-colored themes (2025) lets you combine multiple primary accents and richer color palettes for stronger brand expression.
  This enhances visual variety while keeping accessibility in mind.
• Key Benefits
  Use centralized management to ensure consistent branding, improve accessibility, and modernize your intranet without third-party tools or code.
  Non-technical users can create and apply polished, brand-aligned sites quickly.

Overview of the Video

The YouTube video from SharePoint Maven Inc demonstrates how organizations can quickly give their intranet a branded look by using the new Brand Center and out-of-the-box tools in SharePoint. In clear, step-by-step fashion, the presenter shows how to set up brand colors, create a custom theme, and apply that theme across sites without writing code. Consequently, the video targets both administrators and site owners who want a unified look without relying on developers or third-party tools. Moreover, the piece emphasizes accessibility and consistency as core motivations for adopting these features.

The tone remains practical and instructional rather than promotional, and the author walks viewers through tenant-level and site-level options. Therefore, viewers can evaluate whether a centralized approach or a more distributed model fits their organization. The video also highlights how the tools fit into the broader Microsoft 365 administration experience. As a result, decision-makers can better plan governance and rollout strategies.

Key Steps Demonstrated

First, the presenter enables the Brand Center from the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and explains the permissions required for administrators to manage themes and fonts. Next, the video shows how to add company colors either by using a color picker or by entering hexadecimal values, which allows precise replication of corporate palettes. Then, the demonstration moves to creating a custom theme where up to sixteen color combinations can be defined for different visual elements, which increases design flexibility.

Finally, the video demonstrates the end-to-end flow of applying a theme to a site through the site settings under “Change the look,” and it shows how site owners can select themes published at the tenant level. The presenter also covers creating custom font packages within the Brand Center and applying them alongside color themes. Consequently, the process remains fully graphical and accessible to non-technical staff. Thus, organizations can implement branding with minimal reliance on IT development resources.

Advantages and Tradeoffs

The main advantage is clear: organizations gain consistent branding across their intranet with minimal technical effort, and admins can centrally manage options. Moreover, the visual uniformity supports employee recognition and trust, and accessible themes help meet inclusive design goals. However, central control also introduces tradeoffs because a single tenant-level theme can limit local customization or conflict with site-level needs.

As a result, organizations must balance consistency against local flexibility. For instance, allowing site owners to apply different themes can foster team identity but also risk visual fragmentation and governance gaps. Therefore, many organizations will need to adopt a mixed approach where a set of approved themes is centrally published while maintaining clear rules about when site-level changes are allowed. In short, governance and training must accompany the technical rollout to avoid inconsistency and visual clutter.

Implementation Challenges and Governance

Although the video presents a straightforward path, practical rollout often faces operational challenges such as tenant enablement, permission models, and legacy site compatibility. Older classic sites or heavily customized pages may not inherit modern themes cleanly, which requires additional planning and possible remediation work. Meanwhile, ensuring third-party fonts comply with licensing and load properly across all browsers presents another potential hurdle.

Furthermore, administrators must decide on a governance model that balances speed and control. For example, a tightly controlled model reduces inconsistency but increases administrative burden, whereas a decentralized model speeds adoption but increases risk. Therefore, the video implicitly suggests pairing the technical steps with clear documentation, user training, and a small pilot program. Consequently, pilot testing helps identify conflicts and performance impacts before a wide rollout.

New Features Worth Noting

The video highlights several updates introduced by 2025, most notably support for multi-colored themes, which lets site owners use multiple primary colors within a single theme. This feature broadens creative possibilities and helps match complex brand systems where a single color is insufficient. Additionally, the integration of custom font packages extends visual control beyond colors and gives organizations more typographic consistency.

At the same time, the new features increase the need for quality assurance because richer themes can surface accessibility or contrast issues if not tested. Therefore, organizations should include accessibility checks and user feedback loops as part of any theme deployment. Ultimately, the video by SharePoint Maven Inc provides a useful, practical primer that helps teams assess both the opportunities and the responsibilities tied to modernizing their SharePoint branding.

Keywords

SharePoint custom themes, Create SharePoint theme, Customize SharePoint look, SharePoint branding tutorial, Modern SharePoint themes, SharePoint theme generator, Quick SharePoint theme guide, Apply theme to SharePoint site