WordPress has various features that allow you to customize your websites, including creating a custom admin color scheme. By default, your admin dashboard is in dark gray. Fortunately, it’s easy enough to change the color – let’s look at how you can create a custom WordPress admin color scheme.
Why should you change the WordPress admin color schemes?
The WordPress color scheme refers to the colors used for the design of the website. By default, the sidebar and top bar are gray, and highlighted elements, buttons, etc. are blue.
For most WordPress users, this is fine. However, there comes a time when you want a brighter and more vibrant color for your admin dashboard.
This can be a color scheme that matches your branding design, or simply your own style. Custom WordPress color schemes can also help you manage your WordPress sites more effectively.
For example, you can define different color schemes for admin users and other roles so that they can easily check that they are logged in with the correct permissions.
Different color schemes also help you to differentiate between development, staging and live sites. This is especially handy if you have a few clones of a live site that might confuse you when using these sites at the same time.
How to create custom admin color schemes
Before you do anything, we strongly recommend that you back up your WordPress website. This will allow you to easily restore the latest version of your site if any changes fail.
Once you have successfully backed up your website, you can get started with our instructions below. You have two different options you can try: either via the WordPress settings, or via the WordPress Admin Colors website.
Change color schemes via WordPress settings
From WordPress 3.8, you can adjust the color for your admin dashboard via the WordPress settings. To do this, simply navigate to “Users” > “All users” in your admin dashboard.
Here, click on “Edit” under the user for whom you want to change the color scheme.
On the user’s profile page, you will see the “Admin color scheme” section with 8 different color schemes to choose from.
Select the desired color scheme by clicking on the radio buttons and view the changes in real time.
When you are happy with an option, scroll down and click “Update profile” to save your settings.
Every user can change their color scheme. If you want to prevent this, use the “Force Admin Color Scheme” plugin. This plugin helps you to select a default color scheme for each new user and restricts the ability to change the color scheme to administrators only.
Create a custom WordPress admin color scheme
If the available color schemes don’t meet your needs, you can create custom color schemes via the WordPress Admin Colors page.
First of all, navigate to the WordPress admin colors website and click on “Create”.
A new screen will appear where you can name your color scheme and select new colors for it.
You can select colors for the elements of your WordPress website, e.g. menu text, background, buttons, and preview the changes in real time.
When you are happy with your settings, click on “Generate color scheme”.
Now, we need to add a custom WordPress admin color scheme to your website. After clicking the “Generate color scheme” button, you will be given instructions on how to add the new admin color scheme to your WordPress website.
Once you have downloaded the CSS stylesheet, you will need to add it to your theme directory.
Once you have connected to your file manager area via an FTP server or a plugin such as File Manager, navigate to “wp-content” > “themes” and select the theme you are using.
In this example, we are using the “zakra” theme.
Upload your downloaded CSS file here.
Once you’re done, we’ll move on to the next step.
Now copy the custom codes shown in the second section and paste them into your functions.php file. You can find this file under “Appearance” > “Theme Editor”
Alternatively, you can also use plugins such as Code Snippets.
That’s it! The custom color scheme is now added to the “Admin color scheme” section under the user profile pages.
Conclusion
Changing the color scheme for your WordPress admin dashboard is easy thanks to the WordPress default settings. All you need to do is select one of the 8 default color schemes on the user profile pages.
In case you want to create custom color schemes that suit your individual needs, you can create them on the WordPress Admin Colors website and then add them to your WordPress website.
