How to Create Custom Colors for Google Drive

Do you use Docs, Slides, and Sheets for your student assignments? If you create custom colors for Google Drive, you will save SO much time!

All you will need to do is to choose a color palette of your favorite shades and save them in a format that will work for Docs, Slides, and Sheets.

This template goes perfectly with Shortcuts for Google Drive At-A-Glance. I keep these three references at the top of my Drive so I can use them often.

To save you time (always my goal!) I have some quick steps and a template to get you started. You will create custom colors for Google Drive in no time!

I also have a set of 108 beautiful color swatches, all ready to go here if you’d like to use this shortcut instead:

Ok. Ready to save yourself time designing this year?

CREATe custom colors for google drive

This part is a lot of fun!

To create custom colors for Google Drive, we will use the custom colors feature in Google Slides, we will choose some great shades you can use every day.

It will be easiest to use a template to start with. I created one in Google Slides that features 32 different colors…we will use that one to create a template for your Drive!

First, download the template by clicking the image below:

Each square features a different shade. To customize the color to your liking, click on one square:

Click on the paint tool and then go to Custom:

Change the color by moving the gradient and the hue slider until you find your perfect shade:

The template I shared also includes a slide without colors, so you can create your own shades from scratch if you would like:

As you choose each color, be sure to make the number in the color swatch match that exact shade…I’ll show you why we need this in the next section.

To do this, double-click on a number to highlight it:

Then go to the text color and choose the same custom shade. This should be the last color in your custom list since you just created it…next to the + sign:

Once you have done this for all the color swatches you would like, your template is ready to use!

add custom colors to docs, slides, and sheets

Using the template in any part of your Drive is easy!

Let’s take a quick look at how it works in Docs, Slides, and Sheets.

GOOGLE DOCS:

To use in a Doc, click on any swatches you want. You can select multiple swatches at once by holding the Shift key as you click on them:

Copy them and open a new Doc.

Paste them into the Doc and you will see the numbers appear (since we made this in a Slide, the little square won’t carry over):

But our colors are now stored in this Doc! And they will remain in the Doc as long as you have text with those colors:

GOOGLE SHEETS:

The same will happen when we paste our colors into a Google Sheet…the numbers will carry over and the colors will be automatically loaded into the sheet:

You will find the colors in the text menu under Custom:

GOOGLE SLIDES:

Since we created the color swatches in Slides, they will copy and paste in the same format. The colors will be saved in the shape and text color custom areas:

And that’s it! Store your template in your Google Drive where you can find it fast and save yourself time each time you design!

I hope this will help you create custom colors for Google Drive in no time!

Looking for More Custom Colors?

Want to save yourself all those steps? I have several resources featuring custom colors, all ready for you to add to your favorite Google tools: