If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed trying to create a cohesive look for your PowerPoint presentation, I’ve got great news for you. Microsoft has built-in design that can transform your slides in seconds, and I’m going to walk you through exactly how to use PowerPoint Themes.
What Are PowerPoint Themes?
PowerPoint themes are pre-built design templates that give your entire presentation a consistent look and feel. The beauty of using themes is that they automatically apply to every slide in your deck, saving you hours of formatting time.
When to Apply a Theme
That’s completely up to you!
It’s one of the advantages of working with themes, rather than manually applying design elements.
You can start with a blank presentation file and select your theme at the beginning.
Or you can create your slides and content first.
One tip if you create your slides first – save the presentation then switch off autosave. Sure you can change your mind, switching between themes plus there’s undo. However, it can make it easy to return to the standard colours. Simply close the file without saving and open the last saved version.
Finding Your Perfect Theme
If you want to see the effect your theme has on your slides, then I recommend working in slide sorter view.
You’ll find themes under the Design tab in the desktop version of PowerPoint.
They are split into two main galleries: themes and variants. Themes are the overall design templates, whilst variants offer different colour schemes and backgrounds for each theme. There’s a dropdown arrow that reveals even more options beyond what’s displayed in the gallery.
One tip I love sharing: Microsoft offers additional theme files you can download directly from their website if the built-in options don’t quite fit your needs.
You can head over to Microsoft’s official page to find more downloadable themes: https://create.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint-templates.
Just click “browse for themes” in the theme drop-down list, to upload any you’ve saved.
Customising to Match Your Brand
Here’s where it gets really powerful. Let’s say you find a theme that’s almost perfect, but the colours or fonts aren’t quite right. Rather than starting from scratch, you can customise individual elements through the variants option.
You can adjust background styles, switching from white to grey with a single click. The font customisation feature is particularly useful – I can create custom font pairings for headings and body text, then save them for future use. I’ve named mine “MK1” so I can easily access it again.
The colour customisation works the same way. You can choose from preset colour schemes or create your own custom palette.
My advice? Have a sample slide visible with the elements you typically use (text, shapes, images) before you start experimenting with colours. Some options work better with light backgrounds, whilst others suit darker designs.
The Real Time-Saver
The most significant advantage of using themes is efficiency. When I update a theme setting, it automatically applies across every slide in my presentation. No need to manually adjust each slide individually – especially valuable when you’re working with larger slide decks.
And don’t worry about making mistakes. The undo command is your friend, and you can always return to the original default theme if you change your mind.
PowerPoint themes genuinely make creating professional, branded presentations so much simpler. Give them a try on your next project!
Written with the help of Claude AI from an original transcription.
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