Web Design Guide: How to Use the Squarespace Color Palette
Whether you’re a designer or managing your own website design, understanding how Squarespace handles colors will help you create a visually stunning website without losing your mind making a bunch of manual edits!
In this article, I’ll explain the structure of the Squarespace color palette and how to edit it using Site Styles. I’ll also share some insider tips to help you master the system and know when and where to customize your color palette to achieve the website design you desire.
If you prefer to watch a demonstration in action, you can watch the companion video for this article on my YouTube channel.
Understanding Your Squarespace Color Palette
Squarespace handles color palettes in a unique way. Once you load your selected colors, Squarespace generates ten color themes.
These themes can seem random at first, and you might wonder, “How does Squarespace come up with these color schemes and combinations?”
At first glance, it can be overwhelming, but once you understand the underlying mechanism, you’ll find it much simpler to navigate and utilize effectively.
We’ll get into the details on that shortly, but let’s start at the beginning with loading your color palette into Site Styles.
Loading Your Color Palette in Site Styles
To get started, navigate to your site styles panel (click the paintbrush icon at the top right corner of your window) and open the colors window. Here, you'll see where you can edit and adjust your palette.
Figure 1: Paintbrush icon and open Site Styles Panel
Figure 2: The Colors Panel in Site Styles
Squarespace limits you to five colors in your palette. This limitation might seem restrictive if you have more colors in your brand guidelines, but it ensures a cohesive and balanced design. This does not mean you can NEVER use other colors from your brand (I’ll show you how), but you want to narrow down the main color palette to the five you want to use for your website. If you worked with a brand designer to develop your palette, they should be able to help you choose the best five to use on your website.
Once you’ve chosen your five base colors, arrange them from lightest to darkest, with your brightest or accent color in the middle.
Figure 3: Color Palette Editing Panel
Steps to Load Your Palette:
Navigate to site styles.
Open the colors window.
Select ‘Edit Palette’
Using either the HEX or RGB code, load your five base colors in the prescribed order: lightest, next lightest, brightest (accent), dark, and darkest.
Structure of the Color Palette Grid
Visually, Squarespace’s color palette is displayed in a grid-type layout. in the main panel (see Fig. 2 above). The two light colors are stacked on the left, the bright/accent color in the middle, and the two darker colors are stacked on the right.
Think of it this way: the two lighter colors are typically used as backgrounds, the brightest as a pop or accent, and the darkest for text. Of course, you can have a dark background with light text, but you need to pay attention to the contrast levels—more on that in a bit.
Understanding this layout helps when making decisions about which themes to use as you plan the layout and design of your website.
Figure 4: Ten Preset Color Themes
Preset Color Themes in Squarespace
As mentioned previously, once you load your colors, Squarespace automatically generates 10 themes based on your palette.
They’re arranged from Lightest to Darkest: Lightest 1, Lightest 2, Light 1, Light 2, Bright 1, Bright 2, Darkest 1, Darkest 2 as shown in Figure 4.
As you explore them, you’ll start to see the pattern and logic Squarespace uses to apply the colors from light to dark on backgrounds, text, and buttons.
Ten themes are a lot, and while it’s nice to have flexibility and options, you don’t need or have to use them all. Most users stick to using two or three themes consistently across their sites.
Color Themes are Global
This is one of the most important things to master from the start. Color themes are applied section by section within your website, not page by and they are global in nature!
Any change made to a theme affects all instances of that theme across the entire site. For example, if you use ‘Light 1’ in multiple sections across your site, any changes/edits made to the master theme in Site Styles will carry over to every section on your site using ‘Light 1’.
Before making any changes to a theme, it's important to understand its implications.
Exploring Color Themes in Action
A practical understanding often comes from seeing the color themes in action. Having a feel for the color themes in advance can help you when you start to lay out and design your pages.
I recommend creating a page in the ‘Not Linked’ area of your website that is not ‘enabled’ so you can experiment and see how each of the color themes affects different elements.
Add some sections to the page. Choose different templates from the selection available instead of blank sections so you have different elements on the page.
Edit your sections, and choose a different color theme.
Observe the effect of the theme on that section.
Experiment with different themes in each section and see how elements such as buttons, fonts, and backgrounds change.
Editing and Customizing Squarespace Color Themes
Switching between default themes is straightforward. However, making significant edits requires a bit more expertise.
If you have a particular color combination that isn’t represented in the preset themes, you might want to create a specialized custom theme. However, this task is more suitable for those who’ve developed their understanding of how the Squarespace color palettes and themes work and are comfortable with advanced settings.
Once you click into a theme and scroll down, you’ll quickly realize that there are a seemingly endless amount of items that can be customized. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it can be very easy to lose track of what you’ve changed and can quickly become a messy, time-consuming rabbit hole to go down.
There are better and easier ways to customize your colors on your website that I’ll go over in the next section.
All that aside, if you feel you absolutely need a completely custom theme, here’s how to do it:
Advanced Customization:
Pick a theme you never use.
Be aware that any change impacts all elements associated with that theme site-wide, so be sure you’re not already using this theme.
Select Edit to change the items you want to create your unique custom theme.
Practical Tips for Adjusting and Customizing Colors for Your Squarespace Website Design
Clearly, for beginners, extensive theme customization isn’t recommended. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have any customization or use some of those additional colors from your brand palette that didn’t make the final five.
With the Fluid Engine Editor, Squarespace allows you to customize the color of individual elements within your website, such as shapes, text, and backgrounds.
By applying these changes at the element level within a section and not to a preset color theme, you can maintain the integrity of your themes and not impact any of the other elements or sections of your website.
Making Independent Color Adjustments
Change the text color in an individual text block.
Highlight the text.
Use the color dot in the editing tool to select a new color.
You can select a color from your existing palette or input a custom color using hex codes.
Figure 5: Selecting a text color from the color palette
Figure 6: Selecting a custom color for text.
You can also change the color of the highlight effect if you’re using that to emphasize your text.
Figure 7: Editing the color of the text highlight
Background Color Adjustments in Text Blocks
You can also change the background color of text blocks. Select the text block, click on the style background, and choose a new color. You can even adjust the transparency to achieve the desired look.
Figure 8: Editing the background color of a text block
Changing Other Element Colors
Beyond text and background colors, you can adjust other elements like section divider borders, shapes, etc. This allows you the option to add a pop of color to bring your design to life.
The steps are basically the same for most elements:
Select the element and click the ‘pencil’ icon to open the editing panel.
Use the color options to adjust its appearance.
This adjustment will affect only the selected element, ensuring your overall theme remains consistent.
Note: To edit section dividers, you’ll need to go to the editing panel for the section.
Have fun experimenting with different elements and seeing how they bring your website design to life! But before you commit to anything, there is one last important tip about using your Squarespace color palette correctly to ensure a professional-looking design that is also inclusive.
Accessibility and Color Contrast
Color contrast is crucial for accessibility. Accessibility means that your website can be used by anyone, including people with disabilities. Appropriate levels of color contrast are critical to ensuring that your site is readable and pleasing to the eye, with text that stands out against the background. To set yourself up for success, you’ll want to test your color palette and any color combinations you plan to use to confirm they meet accessibility standards.
Tying it All Together…
Understanding how your Squarespace color palette is structured within Site Styles and learning how to optimize it can transform how your website design. By mastering how themes work and practicing cautious and thoughtful customizations, you can create a visually compelling and cohesive website with minimal effort.
And remember, beautiful design must go hand in hand with a beautiful user experience, so don’t skip prioritizing accessibility by ensuring proper color contrast levels are in place.
Of course, consider enlisting professional guidance if you feel like you’re in over your head or want to explore more advanced customization options. Spending a little bit of time with a professional Squarespace web designer can save you a lot of time, frustration, and money down the road. Many web designers, including me, offer consultations that can be just the ticket if you’re not in need of a full website design but would love some guidance from a pro!
If that sounds like something you need, check out my Power Hour Consultation service.
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