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Every chart type draws its colors from a palette, and most draw a legend naming what each color means. This page covers the palettes themselves and the Legend section of the Style tab. Where colors are assigned differs by chart type. On a bar, line, area, or scatter chart, each measure carries its own Palette or Color control in its axis section of the Style tab, and what a color stands for is decided by that measure’s break-down on the Fields tab. Pie, funnel, sankey, heatmap, and map charts each carry a single Palette dropdown of their own — but the palettes are the same ones below.

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Color scales

Breaking a measure down by a dimension creates one series per distinct value of that dimension, each taking a color from the active palette. The dimension’s type decides which palettes are offered: For strings, only discrete bucketing is available. For dates and numbers, you can choose whether each value gets its own distinct color (discrete) or a gradient is applied across the range (continuous). If a date or numeric field only offers discrete options, try casting the field to the appropriate type. A measure with no break-down is drawn as a single series in one color, picked automatically as the next palette color after every break-down’s values so it never collides with them. Set it explicitly with the Color swatch in that measure’s row. Two measures broken down by the same dimension share its color scale: the same value is the same color in both, and a palette change on either applies to both. Each measure still keeps its own legend row.

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Palettes

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Discrete palettes

For discrete data, colors from the palette are applied in palette order, matching the sort order of the query results. Change the palette order by adjusting the sort in your query. Enable Reverse colors to reverse the order colors are applied.

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Continuous (gradient) palettes

For continuous data, the gradient palette maps to the range of values in your results. Select a different gradient from the palette dropdown to change the color treatment.

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Custom palettes

If none of the provided palettes fit your needs, you can build a custom palette for an individual chart:
  1. Open the palette control on the Style tab.
  2. Select the last option in the palette menu: Custom palette.
  3. Click Customize to open the palette editor.
  4. Add, remove, and edit individual hex colors.
  5. Use Open hex code editor to toggle a bulk editor and paste a comma-separated list of hex values.
To reuse a custom palette across charts, copy the hex codes and paste them into the custom palette editor of another chart.

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Legend

The Legend section at the bottom of the Style tab configures the chart’s legend: On a bar, line, area, or scatter chart, each measure gets its own legend row titled with the measure name: a broken-down measure lists its values, a measure with no break-down shows its symbol alone. Clicking an entry hides only that measure’s series, so a value shared by two measures’ break-downs is hidden where you clicked it and left alone in the other legend. Other chart types decide for themselves whether a legend starts on: a pie carries one regardless, a funnel starts without one, and a sankey has none to configure.