Power BI Themes

Power BI Themes Skill

Manage report-wide themes and per-visual conditional formatting. No Power BI Desktop connection is needed.

Applying a Theme

Power BI themes are JSON files that define colours, fonts, and visual defaults for the entire report. Apply one with:

pbi report set-theme --file corporate-theme.json

This copies the theme file into the report's StaticResources/RegisteredResources/ folder and updates report.json to reference it. The theme takes effect when the report is opened in Power BI Desktop.

Inspecting the Current Theme

pbi report get-theme

Returns:

• base_theme -- the built-in theme name (e.g. "CY24SU06")
• custom_theme -- custom theme name if one is applied (or null)
• theme_data -- full JSON of the custom theme file (if it exists)

Comparing Themes

Before applying a new theme, preview what would change:

pbi report diff-theme --file proposed-theme.json

Returns:

• current / proposed -- display names
• added -- keys in proposed but not current
• removed -- keys in current but not proposed
• changed -- keys present in both but with different values

This helps catch unintended colour changes before committing.

Theme JSON Structure

A Power BI theme JSON file typically contains:

{
  "name": "Corporate Brand",
  "dataColors": ["#0078D4", "#00BCF2", "#FFB900", "#D83B01", "#8661C5", "#00B294"],
  "background": "#FFFFFF",
  "foreground": "#252423",
  "tableAccent": "#0078D4",
  "visualStyles": { ... }
}

Key sections:

• dataColors -- palette for data series (6-12 colours recommended)
• background / foreground -- page and text defaults
• tableAccent -- header colour for tables and matrices
• visualStyles -- per-visual-type overrides (font sizes, padding, etc.)

See Microsoft theme documentation for the full schema.

Invalid Properties to Avoid

These properties look plausible but are not in PBI's theme schema. Including them causes PBI Desktop to fail silently or crash when loading the report: