Tableau Desktop and Web Authoring Help

Tableau Desktop comes installed with many predesigned colour palettes that are effective for visualising data. You also have the option to create and use your own custom colour palettes, which can be useful for branding purposes. In Tableau version 2025.3 or later, you can create a custom colour palette directly in the flow of your work in Tableau Desktop. In earlier versions of Tableau Desktop, you can create a custom colour palette by modifying the preferences.tps file that comes installed with your version of Tableau.

Tableau offers three types of colour palettes:

Categorical: For discrete fields without inherent order (for example, product names and categories), assigning a unique colour to each item.

Diverging: For continuous fields, uses two contrasting colours that radiate from a neutral midpoint (for example, white or light grey) to display quantitative data with positive and negative values, or deviations from a baseline. Colour intensity signifies magnitude.

Sequential: For continuous fields, uses a single colour with varying intensity to represent a range of quantitative values, ideal for data with a natural progression (for example, low to high, all positive or all negative).

Create a custom colour palette directly in a Tableau workbook (Tableau version 2025.3 and later)

In Tableau Desktop, custom colour palettes can be created in a couple of ways. The most frequently used methods are through the Colour encoding box on the Marks card or through the Format workbook menu, accessed through the toolbar.

Access custom colour palettes through Colour on the Marks card

On a Tableau worksheet, drag and drop a field onto Colour on the Marks card.

Select Colour on the Marks card.

Select Edit Colours...

In the Edit Colours dialog, expand the colour palette dropdown, scroll to the bottom and select Create Custom Palette.

Create a categorical custom colour palette

A categorical colour palette offers several distinct colours that can be assigned to discrete dimensions. For instance, when a discrete dimension such as Region is placed on the Colour card, Tableau applies a categorical colour legend.

1. Name the custom colour palette.

2. Choose if you want to create a palette based on a preloaded palette or none.

3. Select Paste Swatches to enter multiple hex codes or RGB values or select Add Swatch to add colours individually.
   

From the Add Swatch dialog, you can:

• Select colours from the Dark or Light Palettes

• Enter a hex code

• Select the plus sign to add colours from the system’s colour picker
  
  
  

From the colour picker dialog, you can:

• Enter a hex code

• Enter Red/Green/Blue (RBG) and Hue/Saturation/Value (HSV) values

• Select a colour from the colour picker spectrum
  
  

4. Select OK.

5. Continue adding swatches until you have built your custom colour palette and save your work.

When you navigate to the colour encoding box on the Marks card, you can assign colours from your custom colour palette to fields on your visualisation.

Create a sequential custom colour palette

A sequential palette shows a single colour, varying in intensity. You must specify at least the two end colours in the sequential colour range. Tableau extrapolates the shades in between.

1. Name the custom colour palette.

2. Choose if you want to create a palette based on a preloaded palette or none.

3. Enter a hex code (without the # sign) in the hex code field, select an empty swatch to use the colour picker, or select Paste Swatches to enter multiple hex codes or RGB values.

Create a diverging custom colour palette

A diverging palette combines two sequential palettes, sharing a central colour but varying at their extremes. This palette type employs colour intensity (lightness or darkness) to indicate numerical magnitude, while the specific hue (such as orange or blue) denotes the value’s range. Diverging palettes are frequently used to illustrate differences between positive and negative values.

1. Name the custom colour palette.

2. Choose if you want to create a custom palette based on a preloaded palette or none.

3. Enter a hex code (without the # sign) in the hex code field, select an empty swatch to use the colour picker, or select Paste Swatches to enter multiple hex codes or RGB values.

Paste swatches

Paste in several hex codes or RGB values, separated by commas, to add several swatches at a time.

Access custom colour palettes through the format menu

1. On the Format menu, select Workbook.

2. The Format Workbook pane replaces the Data pane on the left and provides a series of dropdown lists where you can change the fonts, line style and colour palettes in a workbook.

3. Scroll to Colour Palettes and expand the menu next to the colour palette type you’d like to add: Categorical, Diverging or Sequential.
   
   

4. Scroll through all the available colour palettes to the bottom and select Create Custom Palette.

Delete or modify a custom colour palette

1. On a Tableau worksheet, select Colour on the Marks card.

2. Select Edit Colours...

3. In the Edit Colours dialog, expand the colour palette dropdown and select the palette you’d like to delete or modify.

4. For a categorical palette, select the pencil icon to modify the palette, or select the trash can icon to delete the palette.
   For a diverging or sequential palette, expand the menu to the right of the selected palette and then select Edit Custom Palette or Delete Palette.
   
   
   
   
   

Caution: You can’t restore a deleted custom colour palette. They are stored in the preferences file for Tableau. If you delete a custom colour palette within Tableau Desktop, it is also deleted from the preferences file.

5. In the Edit Custom Palette dialog, you can change a colour by selecting a swatch. To remove a colour from the palette, select the X that appears when hovering over it.
   
   
   
   

Create a custom colour palette by modifying the preferences file (Tableau Desktop 2025.2 and earlier)

In Tableau Desktop 2025.2 and earlier versions, you can create and use your own custom colour palettes by modifying the Preferences.tps file that comes with Tableau.

When you modify Preferences.tps to add colours, use the standard HTML format for the new colours (hex code #RRGGBB or Red Green Blue format). When you save the workbook and restart Tableau Desktop, the colour palette names you added to Preferences.tps appear in the Select Colour Palette drop down list (Edit Colour dialog). You can use a custom palette like you would any other.

About the preferences file

You can add as many custom palettes as you like to your Preferences.tps file, each with as many colours as you want. Although there isn’t a limit to how many colours can be added to each custom palette, the Edit colours dialog box only shows 20 colours. If you need to manually assign more than 20 colours to data items, you may want to create several custom palettes with 20 or fewer colours in each palette.

When you modify Preferences.tps to add colours, use the standard HTML format for the new colours (hex code #RRGGBB or Red Green Blue format). When you save the workbook and restart Tableau Desktop, the colour palette names you added to Preferences.tps appear in the Select Colour Palette drop-down list (Edit Colour dialog). You can use a custom palette like you would any other.

Note: When you edit your Preferences.tps file, be sure to use straight quotation marks (' ' or " ") to delimit the palette name and type, not curly quotation marks (“ ” or ‘ ’).

Edit the preferences file

The Preferences.tps file is located in the My Tableau Repository folder that is created when you install Tableau Desktop, likely located in Documents. The preferences file is a basic XML file that you can open in a text editor to modify. An unedited preferences file looks like this:

To edit your preferences file:

1. Go to the My Tableau Repository folder in your Documents directory, and open the Preferences.tps file with a text editor.
2. Between the opening and closing workbook tags, insert opening and closing preferences tags so that it looks like this:

   <?xml version='1.0'?>
   <workbook>
   <preferences>
   </preferences>
   </workbook>

   Note: If your Preferences.tps file already has preferences tags, you don't need to add them again.

3. Follow one of the next procedures to create a custom colour palette by inserting color-palette tags between the preferences tags. For example:

   <?xml version='1.0'?>	
   <workbook>
   <preferences> 
   <color-palette name="MyColors" type="regular">
   <color>#1e4c56</color>
   <color>#cba94b</color>
   </color-palette>
   </preferences>
   </workbook>

   Colour palettes can be categorical (type="regular"), sequential (type="ordered-sequential") or diverging (type="ordered-diverging").

4. To add more palettes, insert another set of color-palette tags.

   <?xml version='1.0'?>	
   <workbook>
   <preferences> 
   <color-palette name="MyColors" type="regular">
   <color>#1e4c56</color>
   <color>#cba94b</color>
   </color-palette>
   <color-palette name="MoreColors" type="regular">
   <color>#ffe96f</color>
   <color>#799a0d</color>
   </color-palette>
   </preferences>
   </workbook>

5. You must restart Tableau Desktop to see the new colour palettes.

Create a categorical palette

A categorical colour palette contains several distinct colours that can be assigned to discrete dimension members. For example, when you put a discrete dimension such as Region on the Colour card, the categorical colour legend is used.

In the preferences file, a categorical palette is type="regular".

Create a sequential palette

Another type of palette is the sequential colour palette. This type of colour palette is used for continuous fields, typically for measures. Typically, a sequential palette shows a single colour, varying in intensity.

You must specify at least the two end colours in the sequential colour range. Tableau will extrapolate the shades in between.

Create a diverging colour palette

The third type of colour palette is a diverging colour palette. Instead of a gradient from one extreme to the other, a diverging palette is like two sequential palettes that share a colour in the middle but have different extremes. This type of palette shows two ranges of values using colour intensity (how dark or light) to show the magnitude of the number, and the actual colour (orange or blue) to show which range the number is from. Diverging palettes are most commonly used to show the difference between positive and negative numbers.

Use discontinued (classic) colour palettes

In version 10.0, Tableau created new colour palettes, updated some existing ones (such as Tableau 10 and Tableau 20), and discontinued others. If you want to keep using a colour palette that was discontinued, you can edit your Preferences.tps file to add the hex values for the palette. You can add as many colour palettes as you like.