best colours for powerpoint presentations

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How to Choose the Best Colors for Your Presentations

Choosing colors for your slides is one of the most crucial decisions to make even before starting to work on your Google Slides or PowerPoint presentation. Basically, colors can help you communicate your message more effectively, and they can evoke many different feelings or emotions on your audience. Keep reading to find out how to choose the best colors for your presentation.

Color Psychology

Color temperature, neutral colors, some tips on how to combine colors for your presentation.

It is quite important to know how your audience perceives colors and how these are related to the topic you are talking about. For example, red can convey a sense of danger, but also love, depending on the context. These are some common connotations that colors have on humans:

• Red : Evokes passion and strength. It’s an energetic and intense color that represents power and determination. It’s usually present on brands related to beverages, gaming and the automotive industry.
• Blue : Conveys a sense of security, confidence, responsibility and calmness. It is the most representative color in the healthcare and finance industries.
• Yellow : This is the color of light. It is a stimulating color that conveys energy, awakes awareness and inspires creativity. You will surely find yellow in the food industry.
• Green : Undeniably, the color of nature, life and peace. This color conveys a sense of growth, balance and stability like no other. It is quite popular among big companies, especially in the energy and tech industries.
• White : It is considered the color of purity and innocence. When it comes to evoking simplicity, optimism and integrity, white is second to none. You will find it for sure in the healthcare industry, and it is making its way in the fashion industry too.
• Black : Even though black is associated with seriousness, it can also convey elegance and courage. Fashion brands and luxury products make good use this color.

Take note of these hints and try to choose the color that best suits your message. For example, in this template we used bright and vibrant colors, since it is an education-themed presentation intended for a very young audience:

Click here to download this template

Colors can be grouped based on their temperature , which can be determined by comparing any given color in the visible spectrum with the light that a black body would emit when heated at a specified temperature. So, according to their temperature, there are two groups of colors: 

• Warm colors: These range from red and orange to yellow. If you click on the footer below, you will be able to download one of our templates containing a palette full of warm colors:

• Cool colors: These range from green and blue to violet. Again, click on the footer below to download a template that contains cool colors:

Mainly, warm colors convey energy and optimism—it is like giving a warm reception to your audience. On the other hand, cool colors are associated with serenity and confidence, just what you need to have a peaceful time.

White, black and all shades of gray are not considered neither warm nor cool. In fact, we could say colors such as creme, beige, brown and others with a high amount of gray are also neutral.  These colors do not influence others and can actually be combined with almost any color. As for their meaning, elegance and solemnity are pretty much guaranteed, as well as harmony.  When combining neutral colors, oftentimes a bright color is used as a contrast to highlight certain elements and bring them to the front. Click on the footer below to see an example of a presentation with neutral colors: 

To achieve a nice color harmony and make the most of it, it is best if you take into account the color wheel, as well as the concepts of hue, saturation and brightness. 

• Hue is basically what differentiates a color from any other. Thanks to the hue, you can visually tell apart red from blue, for example.
• Brightness defines how light or dark a hue is, and measures its capacity to reflect white light.
• Saturation refers to how pure a hue is. A saturated color appears more vivid, whereas a desaturated color looks duller.

With this information, you can make several different combinations: 

• Monochromatic Color Scheme: These contain different shades of a single color. Click on the footer to see one of our monochromatic templates based on red.

• Complementary Color Scheme: These are composed of a pair of opposing colors on the color wheel. If you click on the footer below, you will be able to download a presentation template with this scheme.

Analogous Color Scheme: This scheme includes colors that are adjacent to each other on the color wheel. Click on the footer to see an example of this scheme applied to a presentation: 

Triadic Color Scheme: This uses three colors equally spaced on the color wheel. Click on the footer to download a presentation that makes use of the triadic color scheme.

In order to get the best combination, you will need to consider how many colors you will use in each slide and how you will manage the contrast between them. These should also be suitable for your intended message or your brand.   Finally, try not to overuse very intense colors—use them only for emphasis. Keep everything consistent by applying the same color to each instance of an element within your presentation (for example, use the same color in all the titles). Include illustrations or pictures that work well with the chosen palette. If you need to apply filters to the pictures, you can refer to our “ How to Apply Filters to the Pictures in Google Slides ” tutorial, or its PowerPoint equivalent. Some of our templates include color variants, making it so much easier for you to adapt them to your topic and/or brand. Just click one of the options that you will find below “Themes” on the right side of the screen. 

Selecting color variants

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The Psychology of Color in PowerPoint Presentations

• April 12, 2013
• Kevin Lerner

Discover how the colors you choose for your PowerPoint presentations can guide the emotional response of your audience.

What are the best colors for a powerpoint presentation it all depends on who your audience is and what you want them to feel.

When used correctly, color can help audience members sort out the various elements of a slide. But its power goes beyond mere clarification. To some extent the colors you choose for your visuals guide the emotional response of your audience.

Blue: The most popular background color for presentation slides

Blue is one of the most common background colors. It’s calming and conservative, which is why it’s very popular with business presenters, as well as for for trainers. Studies have shown that blue has the power to slow our breathing and pulse rates. Dark blue backgrounds with light text are great for conservative corporate no-nonsense presentations. Lighter blue- more common in re cent times- work well in relaxed environments with the lights on, and help promote interaction.

Examples of BLUE in Presentations

• Quest Diagnostics: A serious company with a seriously navy blue background. The subtle angled lines promote a feeling a movement and technology. Blue complements the Green of Quest’s logo, and the white title bar provides a clean but stark contrast to the body.
• This blue template for waste management firm Republic Services provides a conservative backdrop for the financials and white bullet points. The yellow titles stand out, as does the orange, red and blue themed imagery at the bottom, not to mention the company’s logo.
• This slide for Dr. Soram Khalsa’ Complementrix Vitamin system features a template with a dark blue with angled lines. And the inner portion of the template featured a light blue-hue burst of a sun-ray to convey bright life and energy.
• This slide for Lender Direct featured an image of a file folder, edited in Photoshop, with a 80 % transparency set against a light blue background. The light blue graphic helped to convey a sense of openeness , and professionalism, while maintaining the company’s blue brand.

Green: Stimulates interaction and puts people at ease

Green stimulates interaction. It’s a friendly color that’s great for warmth and emotion. Green is commonly used in PowerPoint presentations for trainers, educators, and others whose presentations are intended to generate discussion. It’s also a great color for environmental and earth-oriented discussions.

Examples of Green in Presentations

• This slide for Hills Pet Nutrition features a modern green background with textured lines promoting a warm, but contemporary feeling. Great for their topic on pet affection.
• Money is green and so is this presentation for Presidio Finance. The white text contrasts nicely with the forest green finance images, helping to project a no-nonsense image of success and accomplishment.
• In this slide for TD Waterhouse, we created top title bar in dark green, integrating smoothly with their lime green logo. The green-hued process chart on the slide image stands out comfortably against the textured grey background.
• The flowing green arcs at the bottom and green title text helps substantiate this slides message of health and vitality. Executive Success Team’s green logo and brand also promotes a relaxed and comfortable feeling, just like Mona Vie.

Red: Handle with Care in Presentations!

Red is one of the most influential colors in your software palette — but it also carries negative cultural attachments, so use it carefully. Red is also a great color for conveying passion. Or talking about the competition. Do not use Red in financial information or tables and charts.

Examples of RED in Presentations

• The rich red of Oracle is maintained in this template, featuring red title text in an inset red rectangle and a red bottom bar of binary numbers for a look of blazing edge technology
• Trace Security uses a similar red title bar element, tying in to their black and red logo and brand.
• Red and black are also colors for Sales Training Consultants, and in this slide, we used a flat beige background, with a title bar in bright red together with red bullets and a red target graphic.
• The body pages of the Grenada presentation feature Red, but in an inset border. Text is inversed in white, as is the main body area. The key states in this map are highlighted in red.

Purple: Mystical and Emotional color in presentations and design

Purple is often associated with royalty and wealth. Purple also represents wisdom and spirituality. Purple does not often occur in nature, it can sometimes appear exotic or artificial. Nearly all the clients who come to me with presentations featuring purple or lavender are women. It’s a feminine color and it’s a good color for emotional or spiritual presentations.

Examples of Purple in Presentations

• Crosley & Company’s branding is maintained with a dominant dark purple background, and orange titles.
• A soft lavender background option gives these two medical doctors a chance to add some warmth for their mostly women audiences.

Yellow, Orange, & Gold: Attention-getting colors of affluence and prestige

Yellow can create feelings of frustration and anger. While it is considered a cheerful color, people are more likely to lose their tempers in yellow rooms and babies tend to cry more in yellow rooms.

Since yellow is the most visible color, it is also the most attention-getting color. Yellow can be used in small amount to draw notice, such as key words, or highlights but not in backgrounds. Rather than using flat yellow as a background color, consider a more “golden” or orange color. Simply adding texture to a yellow background or superimposing a photo (in Photoshop) with low transparency, can add more richness to the yellow background image.

Examples of Yellow / Gold in Presentations

• This flat yellow slide is for Web-Reach, an internet consulting firm in Miami. Even though their message was to compete with the Yellow Pages phone book, their yellow background was flat and uninspired.
• With a simple fix in Photoshop, yellow became Gold, and the same slide became more robust. We added a red bar to the top, and a grey arc to the left. Same information, just a textured golden hue helped deliver elegance and style.
• A golden textured earth background helped this slide convey the message of international elegance. The green money background blends with the gold, and the black text brings a nonsense message to the page.
• A golden textured background for Fountainhead Consulting with elements of yellow, blue, red, and grey.

Black: A strong and definite color that’s often overlooked!

Don’t forget your basic black. Often overlooked, black is a background color with useful psychological undertones. Its neutrality makes it a good backdrop for financial information. Black connotes finality and also works well as a transitional color which is why the fade to black transition is powerful, as it gives the impression of starting fresh.

Examples of Black in Presentations

• It’s a matter of black and white for this construction company. It’s intro slides were pure white text on a black background, emphasizing the company’s core beliefs. After the 3 b&w slides, the room lit-up with a series of dynamic colorful slides as the speakers enlightened the audience.
• Over 10 years old, this slide from Ryder transportation remains one of the strongest visuals. Set against a flat black background, the company’s grey logomark conveys a true sense of stability and no-nonsense action. The monotone building blocks tell a strong story.

White: Pure, Fresh and Clean. But a little boring.

White is also a calm and neutral color for presentations. It’s terrific for conveying a fresh start such as a fade to white. It represents purity or innocence. Good for positive information where you want the focus purely on the message, and not competing with a brand image. It’s clean/open and inviting and can create a sense of space or add highlights. But it can also be perceived as cheap, flat (it’s the default color for PowerPoint slides) and harsh on the eyes. Consider grey as a better background color.

Examples of White in Presentations

• To help to maintain a clean and open look this consumer collaborative called on us to integrate their brand colors set against a plain white background. The blue and orange bars provided a conservative frame, while the arcs provided a contemporary look of flow and motion.
• This slide for a large architecture and construction firm featured a flat white background offset by a colorful series of modern buildings and logos.

Grey and Silver: A conservative color; Good when Black or White won’t work.

According to psychologists, grey is often thought of as a negative color. It can be the color of evasion and non-commitment since it is neither black nor white. Some say that Grey is the color of independence and self-reliance. A few years ago, silver was the most popular color for cars. And in the presentation world, this calm color is making a comeback. Grey (or “Silver”) is a softer background than the harsh default color of white, and works well on almost all presentations. A dark grey background with light text…or light grey background with dark text…you can’t go wrong!

Examples of Grey in Presentations

• Farmers Insurance’s silver background integrates subtle ray of light elements to help add depth and texture to this slide. The red, blue, and black stock images blend comfortably with the rest of the page. And the white border around the letters add a level of modernism and clarity.
• The stainless steel background of this slide helps promote a modern contemporary look, helping to link the 4 brands together.
• A clean flowing blue arc with a non-obtrusive silver background help make this slide for Margie Seyfer appear fun but conservative
• Interim Healthcare’s brand is maintained, but a muted image in silver help add depth and dimension to the slide’s message, while supporting its key points.

We perceive dark colors as being “heavier” than light ones, so graphic elements that are arranged from darkest to lightest are the easiest for the eyes to scan. On charts, it’s best to arrange colors from dark to light.

Remember that most eyes aren’t perfect. Because color perception deficiencies are common, certain color combinations — including red/green, brown/green, blue/black and blue/purple — should be avoided.

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22 Best PowerPoint Color Schemes to Make Your Presentation Stand Out in 2024

There’s nothing worse than an amateur PowerPoint presentation. If you’re going into a business meeting or sales pitch, your presentation slides should look as professional as you do. That’s why choosing the right color scheme is so important.

In this post, we’ll be sharing a roundup of 22 of the best PowerPoint color schemes you can use to make your presentation look the part. 

All the color schemes on this list have been incorporated into templates created by professional designers, so they’re super-stylish and guaranteed to make your slides stand out.

Whether you’re an educator looking for a color scheme that will keep your students engaged, or a business professional who wants to make an impact in your next meeting, you’re sure to find something suitable below.

Tips for Choosing the Best PowerPoint Color Schemes

Before we jump into the roundup, let’s talk about how to choose the right color scheme for your needs. Here are a few things to bear in mind when you’re comparing your options.

1. Use High Contrast Colors

When it comes to color, contrast is the number one most important consideration. Text, icons, and other important graphics on your slides need to be highly readable, so you need to make sure to use high contrast colors for these elements. 

In other words, use a color with a significantly different tone/brightness from your background. Certain colors are inherently lighter/darker than others. For example, blue is much darker than yellow. As such, these colors tend to pair well together.

I’d also recommend never combining warm and cold colors, like bright red on bright blue or vice versa. This is because human eyes have trouble distinguishing interactions between the different wavelengths, which causes eye fatigue.

2. Consider Color Associations (Psychology)

People have certain subconscious associations with different colors. For example, people associate blue with trust, calmness, and reliability, which makes it a safe choice for business presentations. 

Green is associated with nature, peace, and organic products, which might make it a good choice if you’re working on a sales pitch for an eco-friendly product. 

Black evokes sophistication, seriousness, evil, and mystery, so it can work just as well for spooky Halloween lesson PowerPoints as for high-end fashion brand presentations.

Try to choose a color scheme that fits the kind of associations you want to make. If you’re working on a brand PowerPoint presentation, a safe bet is to stick with your brand colors.

3. Always Use Gradients

In nature, colors rarely appear in solid blocks – they transition gradually from one hue to the next and blend into each other.  

Because we’re used to seeing colors naturally act this way, you should try to do the same in your PowerPoint presentations by blending colors into each other using gradients. Blocks of solid color can look amateurish. 

The good news is that all the templates on this list are designed by professionals who understand this and therefore use natural color gradients to create a professional look.

4. Choose the Right Color Scheme for Your Screen Type

Finally, don’t forget to consider the screen you plan on showcasing your PowerPoint presentation on. Darker color schemes will look good on close-up screens like tablets and desktops. However, lighter colors work better for projections as they tend to be more readable. 

In particular, never use red text if you’re projecting your presentation onto an external screen, as if any kind of unwanted ambient light/glare hits the screen, the color will wash out. In fact, it’s best to avoid any brightly colored text if you’re using a projector.

22 Best PowerPoint Color Schemes

Alright, let’s jump into the list. Below, we’ve listed our top 22 favorite PowerPoint templates with awesome color schemes.

1. Shades of Grey and Yellow – Our Top Pick

If you’re looking for a darker color scheme to use for a business presentation, you can’t go wrong with the Hornette template. Darker shades of grey and black strike a serious tone that befits a corporate environment, which is offset by bold yellow highlights. 

We like how the high contrast between the darker shades and the bold yellow can be used to direct the readers’ gaze to the most important elements on the page and make key messages stand out. 

The template itself includes 50 slides, including a gallery and portfolio slide, and features creative layouts and useful graphics. All graphics can be resized and edited.

2. Teal and White

Teal is a color that blends blue’s dependability with green’s optimism and healing properties. The result is a calming, balanced color that’s packed with personality. 

This multipurpose PowerPoint template uses teal alongside plenty of whitespaces and is perfect for business and personal presentations. All elements are fully editable, and if teal and white isn’t your style, you can pick another of the 5 included premade color schemes included. 

3. Shades of Black

Dark themes are very on-trend right now. If you want to add a touch of sophistication to your presentation or strike a serious tone, you can’t go wrong with this Halbert PowerPoint template. 

The all-black color scheme looks slick and elegant, and the white text is highly readable. This template works best when you don’t have to worry about room lighting, and might be a good fit for fashion presentations.

4. Color Fun

If you want something a little more upbeat, try this Color Fun PowerPoint template. It uses a wide color palette, which can help provide enough variety to better organize the different sections and elements on your slides. 

It’s bright, upbeat, and sets a positive tone – without being too overwhelming. The designer has toned down the colors just enough that they’re not distracting and won’t cause eye fatigue.

5. Monochromatic Blue

This Tortoise PPT template uses a mix of light and darker blues to create a stylish, professional look. The download includes 150 slides in total, split into 5 colors (30 slides per variation). All graphics included are fully editable and resizable in PowerPoint. 

6. Minimalist Light Colors

Bold and bright colors can work well but sometimes, it’s best to keep things simple. This clean and modern PowerPoint presentation follows the principle of minimalism, with very light shades like beige and pale green. It comes in a 1920x1080p format and includes a bunch of awesome icons and graphic elements that are fully vector editable.

7. Orange Burst

Orange is the most vibrant color in the color spectrum. It’s full of energy and life, so it’s perfect when you want to really get your audience excited about the contents of your presentation. This PowerPoint template from aqrstudio uses orange gradients alongside circular icons and graphics.

8. Yellows and Whites

If you’re looking for a yellow template, check out Soaring by Jumsoft. It features an energetic, professional design and includes 20 master slides in the standard 4:3 side, as well as charts, diagrams, tables, and other awesome visual elements. You can choose the layout that’s most suitable for your content and customize more or less everything in MS PowerPoint.

Pastels are the color trend of the year. These lighter, softer shades of colors have been embraced by younger generations like Millennials and Gen Z and have rapidly become associated with self-care for their ‘calming effect’. If you want to incorporate them into your PowerPoint color scheme, check out this pastel template by UnicodeID.

10. Organic Greens

Working on a food-related presentation for a culinary business? Or perhaps you’re putting together a pitch deck on an environmental topic? Either way, this organic green PowerPoint template has the perfect color scheme for you. It’s ideal for health and nature-related slides.

11. Bold Red and Black

The NOVA PowerPoint template by Artmonk uses a stunning red-on-black color scheme. It’s a bold color combination that packs a punch, so it’s great for presentations in which you’re trying to break the mold and make a statement. It’ll look great on screens but might not show up well on projector displays due to the dark background.

12. Bright Multicolor

Here’s another awesome multi-colored palette that’s upbeat and fun. Wide color palettes like this are great for large slide decks as they give you a lot of options to choose from. I can see this one working really well for creative agencies and personal portfolios. 

13. Lime and Dark Blue

Blue and yellow is a classic combination. This lime and dark blue template offers a new twist on that classic combo to make it a little more exciting. If you already use dark blue as part of your brand color palette, this is a great template to use.

14. Pretty Pink

The Pretty Pink color scheme is perfect for creating feminine and youthful PowerPoint presentations. This would be perfect for female-oriented business products, or presentations about beauty, pop culture, and more.

Teal is the perfect color scheme for exuding wealth and intelligence. In color psychology, green connotes wealth and money, whilst blue evokes intelligence. Teal is the perfect blend of the two colors, which makes it a great choice for financial presentations and documentation.

16. Dark with Splashes of Color

If you want a luxurious and ultra-modern color scheme, Black with splashes of color is just the ticket. The black creates a sleek and professional feel, whilst the bold and colorful highlights make the key information in your presentation pop.  

Coral is a bold and vivid color scheme perfect for making an impact on your presentations. This PowerPoint template utilizes coral as the background of each slide which helps the text and other visuals to really stand out.

18. Classic Blue and White

If you’re looking for a clean, modern, and professional color scheme for your PowerPoint presentations, you can’t go wrong with classic blue. The color scheme evokes professionalism and technological prowess and is perfect for tech businesses and startups. The Contact PowerPoint from Envato Elements is a great example of how this color scheme can be used.

19. Pinks and Purples

Pinks and Purples is a vibrant and feminine color scheme that would work perfectly for beauty brands and retail stores. The colors are bold and inviting and have a luxurious feel. This Beauty Care template from Envato Elements utilizes this color scheme as well as unique shapes to make for a visually interesting presentation.

20. Winter Watercolors

Winter Watercolors is a great color scheme for festive presentations. The muted, blue, and green cold tones are easy on the eye and evoke a homily feeling. This would be perfect for creating slideshows for Christmas parties or other winter-themed events.

21. Coral Highlights

Unlike the last coral color scheme we looked at, which used a coral background with white text, this template uses mostly white slide backgrounds. Coral is used much more sparingly to highlight key elements on the slide. This gives the PowerPoint a more relaxed and feminine touch.

22. Primary Colors

This Primary Colors color scheme is perfect for adding a vibrant touch to your presentations. This color scheme is a modern take on the classic colors of red, yellow and blue, and would be perfect for creating fun and engaging business presentations.

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• By Illiya Vjestica
• - January 26, 2023

What are the Best Colours for Your PowerPoint presentation?

Choosing the best colours for PowerPoint isn’t as black and white as it seems. Many factors go into picking a powerful palette – involving everything from your audience’s emotions to your talk’s cultural context and, of course, to how your slides look.

Suppose you’re taking it as seriously as you should. In that case, you need to consider all of these when deciding on your colour scheme – as nailing this aspect of your presentation’s design will help you to communicate your message in the most impactful way possible. Interested? Let’s get stuck in.

Complementary colours

It would help to consider contrast when picking two or more colours for your presentation.

Contrasting colours are valuables when it comes to heightening the visual effect of your slides. They’re instantly impactful – reeling your viewers in by drawing their eyes to the screen. Also, they enhance your slides’ other elements – such as any fonts or tables used – increasing their visibility when used correctly. There’s a reason why black is nearly always paired with white and blue with yellow or orange. Together, they create a powerful impression… and it’s all thanks to contrast.

There’s a simple way to discover contrasting colours, and that’s by using a simple colour wheel. With this tool, you can easily see which colours are the opposite of which… helping you to refine your palette and ensure your presentation has colourful clout.

It also helps to follow the 60-30-10 colour rule . It’s generally for interior decorating but can support picking a colour scheme.

What Colours should not be used in PowerPoint?

When choosing colours for your slides, it’s important to create a contrast between the background and the text. I recommend avoiding using light text on a light background.

For example, a yellow background with white text often makes the text difficult to read. Likewise, with yellow text on a white background, it’s challenging to see.

Make sure your presentation content can be seen at the back of the room. You can use a colour contrast checker to ensure you have a strong contrast ratio to ensure your slides will be readable. This will help make your text more readable and provide a clear contrast between the text and background of your slides to enable your audience to follow along easily.

What are the Most Popular Colours for PowerPoint?

Here are some of the best colour combinations in PowerPoint. You can choose to experiment with your own as well.

Red & Black

Black & Yellow

Others include:

Blue & Yellow

Black & White

Orange and blue

Yellow and purple

Black and white

The selection method is slightly different for more complex presentations using three or more contrasting colours (triadic colours, for those who want to know). Pick three equally distanced colours around the colour wheel to choose the best complementary shades. These colours should, again, work beautifully together – providing that perfect contrast you crave.

Popular triadic choices include:

• Orange, green and purple
• Yellow, blue and red

Generally, we wouldn’t advise throwing a fourth colour into the mix – or more, besides. While using bright colours can have a wonderfully eye-catching effect on your PowerPoint slides, using too many at once could make them too “busy” – overloading the audience and detracting from the potential power of the colour combinations you’ve used. Adhere to the cliche “less is more”, and your simple yet striking presentation should speak for itself.

Colour psychology

You’re probably already familiar with the basic principles of colour psychology. Essentially, it’s been said that specific colours have set effects on people – specifically, causing them to feel a particular way. For instance, red is purported to inspire anger, blue to calm, and yellow to feel joy.

While there’s something to be said for this, colour psychology (as many people understand it) isn’t a flawless theory for one big reason: emotions aren’t quantifiable! Therefore, we can’t honestly claim that specific colours create the same feelings in every person – everybody’s different, and shades carry unique meanings for most of us.

You want to tap into your audience’s context of specific colours and other psychological and physical factors that may come into play. This is where the true magic of colour psychology lies. By understanding what influences your audience when it comes to colour – and knowing which colours are paired up with which emotions and responses in their lives – you can design something that sings. For instance, did you know that while, in Western and Japanese culture, the concept of love is associated with the colour red, it’s symbolised by the colour blue in African culture and yellow in Native American?

You can also your colour choice to the theme of your presentation. More on that later.

Know your audience. Get to know what inspires them, and let that influence your palette. It could make all the difference.

Colour symbolism

So, now you know to look into contrasting colours and your audience’s association with them. But we’re missing one major factor: you. What colours reflect you the best?

There are two ways that you can approach figuring this out. The first is straightforward: looking at your brand’s existing design. If you have a strong image already – of which colours will doubtlessly play a role, used on your website, logo and elsewhere – this is where you should start when designing your presentation. After all, these colours are already associated with you, so using them will create a strong link between your PowerPoint and the rest of your materials. Further, use colours so your audience can recognise you more quickly, and your presentation should look more professional. There are a lot of pros.

Option two requires a bit of decision-making. Suppose your brand doesn’t have any firm affiliations to colour already. In that case, you should consider which colours are associated with what in the context of your presentation and overarching brand ethos. Similarly to the colour psychology we’ve discussed, these hues will help you communicate your message clearly (and colourful). Some colour combinations are considered classic. They go together

Some popular colour associations include:

• Green – nature, the environment
• Blue – the ocean, sadness (referred to as “the blues”!)
• Orange – warmth, autumn
• Red – anger, love, energy

So: what are you talking about? Are there any clear colour associations to that topic already? Drill down to the heart of your presentation’s message, and choose the colours that reflect that the most.

One final thing. Once you’ve discovered your “essential” colour – whether that’s the colour that’s most strongly associated with the topic of your presentation or the colour that you’re hoping will have the biggest influence on your audience – make sure to make it the strongest colour on your palette (for instance, the background of your slides). This should ensure it delivers the impact you’re hoping for… levelling up your talk. Perfection.

Over to Hue

We know that we’ve given you a lot to think about, but if you’re ever feeling confused over colour, remember that it all boils down to the following factors:

Your brand + your audience’s colour associations + visual effect = the best palette

Once you’ve nailed this equation, the rest should come quickly. Good luck!

Choosing the right colours is one thing – putting together a presentation your audience will never forget. That’s another. Get in touch with us today to see how we can help your slides shine.

Illiya Vjestica

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Using The Right Colors In Powerpoint Presentations

Home   >  Presentation Design > Colors in PowerPoint

In this article you will learn the art of using colors effectively. By understanding the significance of colors and where to use them, you can make your message more impactful and memorable.

Select a color theme for your presentation

What is the purpose of colors in PowerPoint slides? 

Contrary to popular belief, colors serve a far more critical function than just making your slides look attractive. They can help you highlight a critical point, make your slide deck look consistent, convey emotions, and ultimately make your message more effective. By using the right colors, you can create a visual hierarchy that guides your audience's attention to the most important information on your slides. For example, using a bold, contrasting color for your call-to-action can help it stand out and encourage your audience to take action. Colors can also be used to evoke emotions and set the tone for your presentation.  Mastering the use of colors in your PowerPoint presentations can make a significant difference in how your message is received.

Watch the video below to learn...

3 Ways to Choose Colors in PowerPoint

How to Use Your Company Colors as Color Theme

You can pick the exact color of your Company logo  using free software or the PowerPoint Eye Dropper Tool. Watch the video below to know more.

How to find custom color palettes

If you are looking to find a beautiful color palette to use in your presentation, please check the video below for a great resource:

The meaning behind different colors

The colors you choose can evoke emotions and influence your audience's perception of your content. In the rest of this article, we will explore the significance of common colors used in presentations and where to use them for maximum impact.

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The Power of Red:

Red is a color that exudes excitement and energy. It inspires action and motivates people to take charge. 

Take a look at the following PowerPoint title templates:

Free Red PowerPoint Title Template

Free Red PowerPoint Title Template 2

When to use Red:

Use red when you want your audience to take action. It's perfect for sales presentations where you want your audience to sign on the dotted line or project presentations where you want to encourage your team to meet deadlines. Red is a powerful color that can drive results.

However, it's important to use red in moderation as it also signifies danger. In finance presentations, for example, it's best to use red sparingly.

The Calming Effect of Blue:

Blue is a color that signifies professionalism, trust, and credibility. It's no wonder that most business presentations use a blue theme. When used correctly, blue can create a sense of calmness and reassurance in your audience.

Take a look at these blue themed title templates:

Download Free Blue Color PowerPoint Template

When to use Blue:

Use blue as a base color when you want to inspire trust and credibility in your audience. If your presentation is about your company's values and tradition, blue should be your color of choice. Blue is also an excellent option for finance presentations and investor presentations.

Exuding Warmth With Orange:

Free PowerPoint Background with Orange Colors

The color orange is known to evoke feelings of warmth and happiness. It's like a bright and sunny day that fills us with positive energy and joy. So, if you want to bring cheer to your presentations, consider using orange as your background color.

Orange PowerPoint Title Template for Free Download

When to use orange

It's important to use the color orange wisely. While it's perfect for presentations aimed at youth or children, it may not be suitable for serious settings. But, if you're looking to raise funds for a good cause or announce a happy initiative for your staff, orange can convey care and warmth.

Shades of Versatile Green:

Green is a versatile color that represents nature, novelty, abundance, and cheerfulness. 

Green PowerPoint Nature Title Template

When to use green

It's a natural choice for presentations about health or ecology, and it can also convey hope in finance presentations.

Free Green Lines PowerPoint Title Set

However, it's worth noting that people with color blindness may find it difficult to read green and red combinations. So, be mindful of your audience and choose your colors wisely.

The Classy Purple:

Purple has long been associated with royalty, class, and exclusivity. Yet, it's not a color that's commonly used in corporate presentations. By incorporating purple into your design, you can convey a sense of luxury, richness, and style that will set your presentation apart.

Free PowerPoint Title Set - Purple

When to use Purple:

Financial institutions often use purple to convey exclusivity. It is a great choice for brochures and other marketing materials. When used in the background of your presentation, purple can add a touch of dignity and sophistication that will impress your audience.

The Allure of Black:

Black is a color that evokes a sense of strength, sophistication, and conservatism. It's a versatile color that pairs well with most other colors, making it a popular choice for designers looking to add richness to their designs.

Free Black Color PowerPoint Title Template

When to use black

In presentations, black is often used as a background color to highlight product packaging or other key elements. Because it's the absence of color, black can make other colors appear brighter and more vibrant.

It goes well with most colors and hence used by most designers to add richness to their designs.

Choosing the Right Colors:

When it comes to selecting the right colors for your presentation, it's important to experiment and find the combination that works best for your message. If you're unsure, stick to white backgrounds with a few design elements to break up the monotony. Remember, the colors you choose can have a significant impact on how your message is received. By incorporating the right color into your design, you can create a presentation that's memorable, impactful, and professional.

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30+ Stylish PowerPoint Color Schemes 2024

Color is an element that can make or break a design, and that rule holds true for presentation design as well. Choosing the right PowerPoint color scheme is super important.

But there’s one extra thing to consider – where your presentation will be given. A PowerPoint presentation can look quite different on a computer or tablet versus on a projected screen.

When it comes to selecting a PowerPoint color scheme, this is an important consideration. We’ve rounded nearly stylish PowerPoint color schemes as inspiration. While darker color schemes might look great close-up on screens, opt for lighter backgrounds (for enhanced readability) for projected presentations.

Note: The last color in each scheme is for the slide background.

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1. Blue, Gray Green & Orange

With a bright overall scheme that’s easy on the eyes, this color scheme can help you create a modern PowerPoint presentation that’s readable and friendly. You can even tweak the colors somewhat to better work with your brand, if necessary.

The best thing about this color palette is that it lends itself to plenty of different presentation styles and applications.

2. Violet Gradient

Using the first two colors noted above, you can create a dark-to-light monotone gradient that can make for a modern PowerPoint design style.

Take this concept and expand it to any other colors you like for your spin on this modern color scheme.

3. Mint and Orange

On paper, these colors don’t seem to blend all that well, but with the right application min and orange on a black background can work.

Use a pair of colors like this for presentations where you are trying to make a bold statement or impact. This concept is often great for trendy topics or ideas that are a little unconventional.

4. Bright Blue and Light

The brighter, the better! Bright blue color schemes are a major trend in PowerPoint design … and for good reason. The color combination creates a bright, light feel with easy readability. Those are two things that pretty much everyone wants in a presentation template design.

The other thing that’s great about a color scheme like this – which focuses on one color – is that it matches practically everything else in the design with ease. It’s great for image-heavy presentations or those where text elements are a key focal point.

5. Teal and Lime

Two colors that you might not expect to see paired create a classy combo that’s interesting and engaging. Both teal and lime are considered “new neutrals” and work with a variety of colors easily. (What’s somewhat unexpected is putting them together.)

What’s great about this PowerPoint color scheme is that the extra interest from the hues can help generate extra attention for slides. The template in the example also mixes and matches teal and green primary color blocks to keep it interesting from slide to slide.

6. Colorful Gradients

Gradients are a color trend that just keeps reinventing and resurfacing. In the latest iteration, gradients are bright with a lot of color. Designers are working across the color wheel for gradients that have more of a rainbow effect throughout the design, even if individual gradients are more subtle.

What you are likely to see is a variety of different gradients throughout a project with different colors, but maybe a dominant color to carry the theme. Use this for presentation designs that are meant to be more fun, lighter, and highly engaging.

7. Light Blue Minimal

This color scheme with light blue and a minimal aesthetic is super trendy and so easy to read. You can add a lot of style with a black-and-white style for images or a deep blue accent for header text.

While a pale blue is ideal here, you could also consider experimenting with other pastels and the same overall theme for a modern presentation design.

8. Bright with Dark Background

The combination of bright colors on a dark background can be fun and quite different from the traditional PowerPoint color schemes that are often on white or light backgrounds. This design style for a presentation is bold and engaging but can be a challenge if you aren’t comfortable with that much color.

When you use a style like this, it is important to think about the presentation environment to ensure that everything will look as intended. A design like this, for example, can work well on screens, but not as well on a projector or in a large room.

9. Navy and Orange

The navy and orange color combination is stylish and classic for presentation design. To add a fresh touch consider some of the effects such as the template above, with color blocking and overlays to add extra interest.

What makes this color combination pop is the element of contrast between a dark and a bright pair. The navy here is almost a neutral hue and works with almost any other design element.

10. Dark and Light Green

A modern take on a monotone color scheme involves using two similar colors that aren’t exactly tints and tones of one another. This pairing of dark green and light (almost minty) green does precisely that.

What’s nice about this color scheme is that the colors can be used almost interchangeably as primary elements or accents. It provides a lot of flexibility in the presentation design.

11. Bright Crystal Blue

Blue presentation color schemes will always be in style. The only thing that changes is the variance of the hue. This pair of blues – a bright crystal blue with a darker teal – works in almost the same way as the pair of greens above.

What’s nice about this color palette though is that the dark color is the accent here. That’s a modern twist on color design for presentations.

12. Blue and Yellow

Blue and yellow are classic pairings and can make for a striking presentation color combination. With a bright white background, these hues stand out in a major way.

What works here is the element of contrast. A darker blue with a brighter yellow creates an almost yin and yang effect with color. The only real caution is to take care with yellow on a white or light background with fonts or other light elements.

Teal is a personality-packed color choice. If you are looking for a bold statement with a PowerPoint template, start here.

While the above color scheme also includes a hint of yellow for accents, the teal color option is strong enough to stand alone. You could consider a tint or tone for a mono-look. It also pairs amazingly well with black-and-white images.

Teal is a fun color option that will provide a lot of practical use with your slide deck.

14. Bright Coral

This color scheme is one of those that you will either love or hate. The bright coral color is powerful and generates an immediate reaction.

It’s also quite trendy and will stand out from many of the other more bland PowerPoint colors that you may encounter. This is a great option for a startup that wants to present with a bang or a brand that has a similar color in its palette. It may not work so well for more traditional brands or those that are more conservative with their slide designs.

15. Dark Mode Colors

A dark mode color scheme might be the biggest trend in all of design right now, and that also applies to presentation design.

This purple and emerald color paired with black with white text looks amazing. It is sleek, modern, and has high visual appeal without having to use a lot of images.

This works best for digital presentations when you don’t have concerns about room lighting to worry about.

If you aren’t ready to jump into dark mode on your own, the Harber template above is a great start with nice color, gradients, and interesting shapes throughout the slide types.

16. Navy and Lime

A navy and lime combination is a modern take on colorful neutrals that are anything but boring.

These colors have a nice balance with a white or light background and are fairly easy to use. With so many brands already using blue in their base color palette, this is an option that works and is an extension of existing elements for many brands. (Use your blue and add the lime to it.)

Also, with this color combination, the idea of a minimal overall slide structure is nice so that the power of the colors and impact comes through. They work beside images in full color or black and white.

17. Modern Blue

When you aren’t planning to use brand colors – or maybe as a startup or independent contractor so you don’t have them yet – a modern color combination can add the right flair to a PowerPoint presentation.

The bright grayish-blue in the Lekro PowerPoint template – you can find it here – adds the right amount of color without overwhelming the content. Plus, subtle orange accents help guide the eye throughout this PowerPoint color scheme. https://elements.envato.com/lekro-powerpoint-presentation-67YW3M

18. Blackish and Yellow

While at first pass, black and yellow might seem like a harsh color combination, it can set the tone for a project that should emanate strength. This PowerPoint color scheme softens the harshness of the duo with a blackish color, that’s grayer and has a softer feel.

Pair this combo on a light background or with black and white images for a stylish, mod look.

19. Orange and White

A bright color can soften the harshness of a stark PowerPoint design. Especially when used for larger portions of the content area, such as background swatches or to help accent particular elements.

The Sprint template makes great use of color with a simple palette – orange and white with black text – but has slide ideas that incorporate the color throughout for something with a more “designed” look to it. (And if you aren’t a fan of the orange, change the color for use with this template to keep the modern feel.)

Purple presentations are in. The color, which was once avoided by many in design projects, has flourished with recent color trends.

Because more funky, bright colors are popular, a presentation with a purple focus can be acceptable for a variety of uses. The use in Batagor template has a modern design with a deep header in the featured color, which works best with images that aren’t incredibly bold in terms of color.

21. Blue-Green Gradients

Another trending item in color is the use of gradients. This trend can be applied to PowerPOint presentations as well.

Use a blue-to-green gradient for a soft and harmonious color scheme that won’t get in the way of content. Use each hue alone for accents and informational divots throughout the presentation design.

22. Black and White

Minimalism is a design trend that never goes away. A black-and-white (or gray) presentation screams class and sophistication.

It can also be easy to work with when you don’t want the color to get in the way of your message. And if a design can stand alone without color, you know it works.

23. Reds and Black

If you are designing a presentation for viewing on screens, such as desktops or tablets, a dark background with bright color accents and white text can work well. (This combination gets a lot trickier on projector displays.)

While reverse text and red aren’t always recommended, you can see from the Nova template that they can be a stunning combination. But note, this modern color scheme is best for specific content and audiences.

24. Blue and Pink

This color scheme is a spin on Pantone’s colors of the year from 2016. https://designshack.net/articles/graphics/how-to-use-the-pantone-color-of-the-year-in-design-projects/ The brighter, bolder versions of rose quartz and serenity and fun and sophisticated.

The unexpected combo sets the tone with a strong, trustworthy blue and adds softness with the paler pink. The colors work equally well with white or darker backgrounds.

25. Blue and Green

Blue and green accents can help a black or white background come to life in a presentation template. The colors here can work with either background style, based on how you plan to display your presentation.

What’s nice about these colors is that they are pretty neutral – since both are found in nature – and can be used with ease for design or text elements in a PowerPoint color scheme.

26. Beige and Gray

If you are looking for a softer color palette, consider beige and gray. These hues can work well on screens or projected, making them a versatile option.

The nice thing about such a neutral palette is that it gives content plenty of room, so that will be the true focus of the presentation.

27. Tints and Tones

While the purplish blue-gray in the Business PowerPoint Presentation template is stunning, it represents a greater trend in presentation design. Pick a color – maybe your dominant brand color – and use tints and tones for the presentation color scheme.

By mixing the color with white or black and gray, you’ll end up with a stunning set of color variations that match your messaging.

28. Bold Rainbow

While most of the color schemes featured here only include a color or two, bright color schemes with wider color variations are trending.

This distinct “rainbow style” can be somewhat difficult to use without rules for each color. Proceed with caution.

29. Bright Neutrals

Lime green is the brightest “neutral” you might ever use. A fun palette that’s versatile can be a solid foundation for a color palette.

It works exceptionally well in the Rouka PowerPoint template thanks to a pairing with a subtle gray background. Using a light, but not white, background can be great for screens and projected presentations because it takes away some of the harshness of a white background. The subtle coloring is easier on the eyes for reading and viewing.

30. Rich Browns

Browns aren’t often what comes to mind when thinking of building a color scheme, but rich browns can be a modern option.

Pair a neutral beige-brown with a darker color for an interesting contrast that works with almost any style of content.

31. Mint Green

Go super trendy with a modern and streamlined palette of mint green and gray on white. While this combination can have a minimal feel, it also adds a touch of funkiness to the design.

Add another hint of color – think orange – for extra accents.

32. Dark Gray and Blue

It doesn’t get more classy than a combination of grays and blues. This new take on a classic color scheme adds another brighter blue as well to pick up on modern trends.

Just be careful with text using a dark background such as this one. White is probably your best option for typography (and look for a font with thicker strokes!)

Home Blog Design Color Theory for Presentations: A Detailed Guide for Non-Designers

Color Theory for Presentations: A Detailed Guide for Non-Designers

Color theory is a common conversation topic for graphic designers as its rules guide every aspect of a quality-crafted project. We can ask ourselves then: does color theory apply to presentation design? The short answer is: definitely yes.

To elevate the impact that your presentations can have, we designed this guide, intended to help people who are not necessarily knowledgeable in graphic design. We will cover in detail what color theory is, how different color schemes make a psychological effect on your target audience, recommended color schemes and pairings, and accessibility rules. Also, you can find two step-by-step examples in the final section on how to craft high-quality presentations by following these rules.

Table of Contents

Color properties and models

• On primary, Secondary, and Tertiary colors

Color temperature

Why do we use color theory, monochromatic, complementary, rectangle or tetradic, split complement, accessibility rules for color theory, black: luxurious, sexy & powerful, white: fresh and clean, silver: innovation and modernity, red: power, action & confidence, blue: trustworthiness, stability & safety, yellow: happiness, energy & attention, green: money, health, nature & luck, purple: wisdom, creativity & ambition, brown: strength, security & isolation, orange: uplifting, attention & energy, pink: girly and romance, case study 1: creating a presentation with contrasting values, case study 2: create a presentation for eco-friendly purposes, case study 3: create a vibrant presentation to engage your audience, final tips for proper usage of color theory in presentation design, what is color theory.

We can resume color theory as guidance on color mixing and combinations for achieving harmonious results, but to truly understand color theory, we must understand the concept of color itself.

The initial findings and research on color date back to ancient Greece , where Aristotle understood colors as “a mixture of light and darkness,” but discordances were seen in the way the human eye was able to perceive the phenomenon of color. Demokritos understood colors as the energy emitted from self-radiating objects but could not be extracted for artistic purposes. For philosophers like Plato, color was perceived after the rays emitted by the self-radiating objects collided with “pure rays” placed in the human eyes by the gods. Therefore the perception of “color” mainly depended on the properties of those rays (size, strength, and speed). 

Even if we can criticize such simplistic approaches to color perception these days, the truth is those definitions aren’t that far from contemporary concepts. The color theory formalization process started with the findings of Leone Battista Alberti, referring to the mixture of colors as an infinite process in which other hues are created, but recognized only four true colors: red, blue, green, and grey. For Alberti, white and black were alterations in different colors.

The works of Leonardo da Vinci were geared toward the interaction of light and shade, where white represented the light and black the absence of color. This formulation was adequately analyzed by Sir Isaac Newton in 1666 when he observed that white light was composed of the entire spectrum of colors present in the rainbow. His experiment, made using two prisms, proved that light lacked any proper color on its own, but “color” was a human perception of the range of energies emitted when light fulfilled these three premises:

• It had a medium for propagation: air, water, etc.
• It involved interacting with at least two elements: an object and light.
• It had a spectator whose rational interpretation was able to “decode” the energy into a “color.”

The direct consequence of Newton’s findings is the method by which we can analyze a color’s properties.

• Hue : How is the color perceived (if it is blue, red, yellow, etc.).
• Saturation : Also known as Intensity, it refers to how vivid color is. The more saturation it has, the stronger the color it will be. The lower the saturation value is, the more grayish the color would look.
• Value : Speaks of the amount of light present in color. Colors with considerable amounts of light are referred to as Tints , whereas colors lacking light are known as Shades . 

Thanks to these properties, colors can be classified according to their interaction with each other in two big models:

• Additive color model : This is where RGB comes from. Red, Green, and Blue make the primary colors as they are the colors available in the photoreceptors of the human eyes. Since white is conceived as the combination of red, green, and blue in equal parts, any ratio alteration creates the different colors we can perceive. Hence, black is defined as the removal of the three primary colors. This theory was conceived by James Clerk Maxwell and is fundamental for any kind of visual media.
• Subtractive color model: This model refers to CYMK, the acronym being Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and Black. It is called subtractive as the concept behind it is purely physics-based. If we take the light spectrum and mix it with pigments, certain pigments absorb part of the light spectrum before letting the light bounce. Therefore, light waves are “subtracted” from the original light source when the color reaches the viewer’s eye. For instance, white objects lack pigments; that’s why the full spectrum reaches the object and can be perceived as white. As you add more pigments, you subtract more light waves from the light source, getting to the point where an object is perceived as black (hence why the letter K is in the acronym). 

Now, these two different color perception models are applied in various mediums. As mentioned above, the RGB color range from the additive color model is used in visual media, such as computers and television. Up to 16.7 million colors can be created from this model, and the methodology for this is by mixing each channel (red, green, and blue) in a range from 0 (least saturated) to 255 (most saturated). 

The CYMK color range from the subtractive color model is used for print media in a broad range of options: paper, textile, dyes, ink, etc. Unlike the RGB mode, CMYK is heavily restricted to an estimated 16k possible colors. Since CMYK is based on pigments, the conformation of each color is expressed in percentages for each tint.

On Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Colors

We have approached a great deal of information, but what about what the teacher told us about “primary” and “secondary” colors in school? Well, let’s blame artists for this. 

During the 18th century, discussions about color vision came to the convention that all elements were made out of three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. This was due to the belief that these three tints could mix all the other colors perceived by the human eye. The RYB model distinct red, yellow and blue as the primary colors , where the mixture of these hues produces the secondary colors : orange, green, and violet.

Tertiary colors result from mixing a primary and a secondary color but include a higher ratio of the primary color. By doing that, you end up with these colors:

• Blue-green (Teal) = Blue + Green
• Yellow-green (Chartreuse) = Yellow + Green
• Red-orange (Vermilion) = Red + Orange
• Red-purple (Magenta) = Red + Purple
• Blue-purple (Violet) = Blue + Purple
• Yellow-orange (Amber) = Yellow + Orange

Although lighting professionals typically coin this concept, the truth is we can classify colors by their “temperature.” For artists and any kind of visual/printed medium, color temperature is a relative concept that relates to how cold or warm a color is perceived and the psychological effects linked to it.

Why is the color temperature a relative concept? Simple, it’s strictly related to the color in proximity to it. For example, if we take a wine color sample (red-violet) and put it close to a blue-colored object, the wine color will be perceived as warmer . On the other hand, if we take that same sample and place it next to a red thing, the wine color is observed as cooler due to the presence of blue pigment.

As a convention, colors can be classified according to their temperature as:

• Warm colors : Red, yellow, and orange hues
• Cool colors : Blue, blue-green, and violet hues

Some colors are “in-between” as they can both be warm or cold. Examples of these are pink, green, and gray.

In a later section, we will analyze the impact color temperature has on psychology and its usage for transmitting emotions in a message.

As in any discipline, we need a framework to provide quality results. Color theory is the consequence of centuries of research made by thinkers, scientists, and artists about the behavior of color and the human psyche. 

This framework ensures we work under visually harmonic results for the desired outcome. Correct usage of color theory can elevate a design to its maximum potential. Although, we should consider that design is not the ultimate reason why the research on color and its theorization happened in the first place. In 1879 Odgen Rod published Modern Chromatics , the first scientifical publication made by a physicist about color theory taking notions from Jack Clerk Maxwell’s postulates. His work inspired the creation of a color standardization system, resumed in the 1912 book Color Standards and Color Nomenclature by Robert Ridgway.

In a different line of research, color representation was an idea often revisited during the 18th and 19th centuries. 3D shapes displayed the different hues, shades, and tints: spheres, pyramids, and cones. Eventually, the method was inefficient for any respectable academic or professional work. It was by the hand of professor Albert Munsell (creator of the Munsell Color System, still used to date) that a proper relationship between hue, saturation, and value was established. His discoveries involved a rigorous methodology in which the three color properties were expressed in percentages as a “rational way to describe color” – contrasting with the traditional (and misleading) color naming system.

Munsell’s first findings were published in his 1905 Color Atlas , improved later in the 1929 Munsell Book of Color . The impact of Munsell’s research was that his system was almost instantly adopted by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for soil research and later on by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for the standardization of skin and hair colors in forensic pathology. Other known usages of Munsell’s system include dental restoration practices (for defining dental pieces’ tint) or comparing digital media to human color vision.

A final application of color theory and the one that mainly involves us in crafting presentations came from the findings of art theorist and artist Wassily Kandinsky . He established the nexus between colors and the effect on human behavior – a study that later evolved into the discipline of Color Psychology . His perception of the spirituality found in art is heavily used to date in marketing as specific colors were able to alter the mood of the audience. We will elaborate on this topic in a later section of this guide.

Types of Color Schemes

In this section, we will explain in detail each of the color schemes. Consider this article on color mixing for presentations as complementary information about tips for how to balance the color ratio and how to select a scheme.

A monochromatic color scheme applies a single color with variations in shades and tints. This kind of scheme is often found in house paint palettes, and the overall effect is consistency.

Whereas it lacks contrast to make it look “vibrant,” the monochromatic scheme is one of the preferred choices of many designers as simply you cannot go wrong with it. It takes the decision of color matching out of the scene, and you can play with different shades and tints of the same hue to make transitions, highlight an element, etc.

The analogous color scheme works with a pairing of the main color and the two directly next to it in the color wheel. One example we can take is an analogous scheme of blue with blue-green and green. 

Overall, it is a color scheme that can be applied in most scenarios without harsh dynamic range impact. Its expected usage is for logos or branding, looking for a harmonic result in which the different colors blend together to convey a message.

If you want to create an impactful contrast, this is your color scheme. The complementary color scheme uses two colors directly across the color wheel. Any other tints or shades relevant to those two colors can also be used. 

And here’s why color theory is critical when approaching a presentation design. How would you actually use the colors in this complementary color scheme? 50/50? If that’s your initial guess, you are awfully wrong.

To preserve harmony in the composition, the advisable route is to consider one color as the predominant and the second contrasting color as the accent . The different tints and shades can be used in similar proportions, always as subordinates of those two. 

The complementary color scheme is ideal for graphs, charts, and infographics. Its striking contrast makes elements outstand; thus, it’s advisable not to overload the balance between predominant and accent. One part can be colored in the accent color, then tints and shades of that color make the different points of the graph. The predominant color becomes the background for that presentation.

The tetradic color scheme defines a rectangle area where the four corners are the selected colors for the palette. It is one of the schemes that oughts to be used with extreme caution.

As a result of this selection process, we end up with two bold tones, and two muted ones, which are secondary colors related to the first ones. To apply the rectangle color scheme, start by making one color dominant . Balance the rest of the colors as subtle accents for different sections. To avoid its overwhelming effect, you can use either black or white (depending on your selection of colors) to tone down the color explosion.

Mobile development is a fine example of applying a tetradic color scheme, where we can see menus with cards in different colors. Keep a close eye on it; you will subtly find the other three tones in each card. Companies like Google or Microsoft use tetradic schemes for their logos, as it boosts the idea of diversity and openness.

The triadic color scheme is trendy in flyers design and is also known to produce the best colors for presentations. Since all colors are equally distant in the color wheel, you get a high contrast composition; however, the best part of this color scheme is to play with the softer tints each color has as it gets closer to white.

Say you pick blue-violet as the dominant color. Yellow-green will be the color to contrast that blue-violet for a balanced look (red-orange if your take was to make it highly vibrant), so you can use either 100% yellow-green or a softer tint of it for different parts of your design. Then, the red-orange becomes a hue to add dynamism to the composition in attention-grabbing details. 

The square color scheme is a bolder version of the rectangle color scheme. Coining the idea of even spaces between colors, you end up with dramatic changes in hues while preserving one primary color, which is one of the reasons why web designers often pick this color scheme. 

For correctly applying this scheme, we suggest you pick the darkest hue as the dominant color , then gradually introduce the others using the 60-30-10 rule for a balanced composition. Using white or black as the predominant color is an alternative, whereas the others picked by the square color scheme make the composition pop.

Finally, we have the Split Complement or Split Complementary color scheme, which resembles a tree structure. This scheme picks a primary color. Instead of selecting its direct complementary, it opts for a split in which the two colors are chosen on each side of the complementary color. 

This kind of scheme is ideal for infographics and presentations since you balance the high contrast of the Complementary scheme with two subtler but intense colors. The second reason why so many users are fans of this scheme is that it keeps a proper balance between warm and cool colors. 

Let’s assume red-violet is going to act as the base color . Then blue-violet can be used to enforce some shadow areas and yellow to bring life to the composition in a striking way. Since the contrast can be overwhelming, be mindful about the dosage of color you apply, and mostly: choose the base color with care . As an extra note, you can use a tint of the selected base color if you consider the chosen one is far too bold (e.g., if you picked yellow as the base color).

Color isn’t the answer to every project. Even if you consider the first step of picking the proper color scheme for your design is done, there are some extra rules you ought to check to ensure design accessibility . We cannot be more clear about this topic: if your design doesn’t follow the basic accessibility rules, all that hard work was done for nothing. Why? Let’s consider the following scenario.

You designed a presentation. The slides are done and ready to be projected for your audience. After the conference started, people in the back rows complained they could not understand what was written in your slides. Or worse: they get confused when trying to visualize graphs. And this doesn’t just affect people with visual impairments (which you should always consider when designing your slides) – different lighting conditions can hinder your own presentation performance from your workspace if the color contrast isn’t appropriate.

Therefore, we will resume the principal guidelines for accessibility that concern color theory:

• Contrast foreground and background : To ensure your presentation is readable, apply a color contrast of 4.5:1 for placeholder text and 3:1 for titles. This also applies if the text was rasterized as part of an image. You can see the difference below between what’s considered a faulty contrast and a well-made pairing.
• A word of caution : Please look at the font color’s overall lightness. There’s a specific reason for not using 100% lightness because it causes visual discomfort to the user.

• Don’t assume people understand color the same way: As we’ve seen above, the perception of color is subjective and can be influenced by factors that can be both psychological, physiological, or even educational. Let’s take a classic as an example. A form section that says, “Required fields are in red.” Whereas this can be simple to understand, a person with daltonism or achromatopsia (total color blindness) won’t even know where to look. Instead, use a visual cue to help the user understand where to look, such as “Required fields are marked with an *.”
• Test designs in different sizes: Something that can be seen as balanced on a printed paper or computer screen may be overwhelming when reduced to mobile format. It’s a good practice to test the color schemes in different screen sizes to be confident users can read and understand our content, regardless of the medium they use.

Psychological effects associated with effective color theory application

Even though the naming is relatively recent, color psychology is the discipline that understands the relationship between color and human interaction. So significant is the importance for this study area that food packaging doesn’t happen accidentally, as improper color usage can alter how you perceive that food. Marketing, interior design, gaming industry, graphic designers , and so many other industries apply the guidelines of color psychology in their daily production to grant consumer satisfaction. 

This section will explore the intrinsic messages that color can transmit and how our presentations can benefit from that.

As an easy term, black can be understood as the absence of color. People can also interpret black as the lack of light or the technical fact that black can absorb the entire light spectrum.

Since we can analyze the color meanings by its positive and negative associations, we start with the positive feelings oozed by the color black. It is a direct message of sophistication and luxury. People instantly associate black with the color of tuxedos, black limos, and many spy-themed movies. 

The black color also speaks of power, and it’s not without a cause, as court dresses historically have been black. Banking institutions reserve the black color for their premium members’ cards.

Negative connotations of the color black are feelings that evoke depression. This can be easily fixed by a sound, contrasting presentation color palette.

Opt for a black-themed presentation if you wish to transmit exclusivity, a VIP product or service for your audience. Gold accents work perfectly for this kind of topic, although somewhat cliché. Instead, you can work with ochre and coffee tones with subtle white accents to make the design tridimensional. Use texture images, such as carbon fiber, to reinforce the message of something luxurious that can elevate the customer’s standards.

Word of advice: not all black colors are precisely “black” – You can find warmer blacks, which work best with ochre tones, and cooler blacks that get along best with silver/gray hues.

White speaks of purity, of something clean and innocent, hence why it is the main color picked for wedding dresses, baptisms, or hotel bedding. White also transmits minimalism, which is why nordic styling often pairs warm wood with matte white finishes for table lamps or furniture. It has a conveyed message of austerity.

As a color, technically speaking, is the full spectrum of light without being bounced. Therefore, white can be understood as a blank state, a new beginning of sorts. Its simplicity makes easier the effort to craft a presentation, so that’s the reason behind many users opting for classical white-predominant themes.

Negatively speaking, white can evoke bad feelings for those who have photophobia (intolerance to harsh lights) due to its striking contrast. Remember the recommendation above for not using pure 100% lightness in the white text? The same applies here for backgrounds unless you have a keen desire to hurt the spectators’ eyesight. Lower the value of white to 80-90% if your presentation is going to be purely white-based, and use 100% lightness for accent details if you prefer.

Pure white can also be perceived as dull, so pairing it with another hue is necessary for specific industries for quality presentation design.

Silver or gray (depending on whether it resembles a metallic look) is a color of grace and modernity. It transmits a message of a change of direction, as light can bounce off it. Hence, professionals use it not just for technological aspects but also mental health as you feel all mental blocks are getting lifted.

It is a color often associated with wealth – its direct relationship with the silver metal – and thanks to being shiny, clean, and alluring, it is associated with everything modern and hi-tech. 

Whereas it can be seen as a perfectly balanced color, it can easily be misused and fall under the bland side of the color spectrum. Melancholy and loneliness are negative feelings sometimes associated due to the lack of a prominent hue on them. Don’t be fooled by such a statement as there aren’t two equal grays in the world: put two gray color samples side by side, and you’ll notice the subtle differences in hue.

It is a color that dignifies, speaks of maturity, and a well-organized scenario. The corporate world uses this color in almost every scenario without even relating that embedded message, and at the same time, it reinforces the meaning. 

In color psychology, the primary colors are the ones that transmit the most powerful messages. Red conveys the fiery energy that fuels power and confidence. It is a color with a duality no other hue can express, and we will analyze why.

On a positive note, red is associated with love and passion. The image of a woman wearing a red dress or holding a red bottle of perfume not just seeks to evoke passion but to present the woman as a confident person, capable of making her own choices to shape her future. She is the coveted element of desire, not by her sex but by the ideal of power she can transmit. 

Traditionally, red is the color of power in cultural scenarios. The Academy Awards attendants and nominees walk over the “red carpet.” Political parties use the color red for their logos. Anyone who sees the color red can instantly associate with the brand Ferrari and their Cavallino Rampante logo. 

Physiologically, red is powerful enough to produce these physical effects:

• Elevate blood pressure
• Enhance metabolic rate
• Increase heart rate
• Induce hyperventilation
• Increase appetite

That’s why using red is not something to take for granted. Abusing the usage of red in a presentation can cause discomfort, whereas proper usage of red makes it engaging and dynamic. Remember that red is also the color used for signage in the case of “danger,” “stop,” “fire,” and several other negative connotations.

Be cautious when using pure red as your dominant color. Sometimes it’s best to play it safer and opt for a shade or a tint not so predominant in the message.

Blue is a color that instantly uplifts productivity. Commonly found in nature as in the daytime sky or water, it inspires serenity in the spectator, building confidence to become more productive. 

One of the reasons blue is so commonly used in designs is because it’s felt as something conservative. Like you cannot go wrong when using blue or pairing blue with another color. That’s another sign of how much of an intense presence blue has in our daily life that we feel natural to pair blue with another hue. 

As one of the primary colors, blue creates a strong feeling of stability and safety. Businesses, banking institutions, and health centers use blue to transmit their values of professionalism and trustworthiness. Psychologically, blue has the opposite effect to red regarding pulse rate, so it’s not unusual to find blue hues in offices requiring much concentration time. 

Negatively, blue is associated with sadness, as in the common saying “feeling blue.” Pure blue schemes can seem detached to some audiences; therefore, opt for a Split Complement , Analogous , or Rectangle color scheme to make it look attention-grabbing. Some schemes pairing blue shades with ochre, brown, or orange can transmit the message of luxury when done with subtlety. 

As the final primary color, it’s bright and intense, becoming one of its main usages as an attention-grabber. In general guidelines, we must not overuse yellow as a color in designs since it quickly builds visual fatigue. Physiologically, that has been related to the amount of lighting it emits in comparison with other colors (hence, its similar performance to white in cases of photophobia). However, we must not forget yellow can also increase the metabolic rate.

Yellow can get perception dualities as we’ve seen with red: some people find it cheerful, inspiring happiness and energy (e.g., SpongeBob SquarePants character), and others perceive it as absolutely annoying. That’s due to the attention-grabbing factor, so we must apply it carefully in presentation design.

Due to it being a stimulating color, we would recommend using tints of yellow as background color if yellow is a must. Avoid pure yellow at all costs. Some people interpret the yellow color as aggressive, and your presentation conveys the wrong message. Psychologically, it has been studied that conceited people prefer yellow color , whereas introverts react negatively to it. Instead, use a color scheme that pairs yellow with a less dramatic color, and apply yellow as the accent color of your scheme.

Is there any other instant connotation for green besides nature, outdoors, and ecology? Green is distinguished as a refreshing color and associated with health and eco-friendly practices.

As a combination of the steady blue and the happiness-booster yellow, green mellows the soul, taking us to a relaxing atmosphere. This is why designers create “green spaces” inside office buildings – becoming critical in dense capital cities with limited outdoor places to unplug from work. 

Historically, humanity has associated green with different values:

• Money : Currency bills, such as the US dollar.
• Health : There are cultural associations of the color green with fertility, eating healthy, the agricultural industry, and living stress-free.
• Nature : The outdoors, green energy, eco-friendly organizations.
• Luck : A four-leaf clover, casinos, winning.

On the other hand, there’s the common saying that one can be “green with envy”, or relate to motion-sickness. Thankfully, that’s not the message green transmits when used in the design.

Before applying green to your slides, remember it’s not the same message you send when using an olive green (that speaks of elegance and earthiness) as when using an aqua green (freshness, sports). Be mindful when picking the green hue and research its own meaning before using the color because you just like it.

Although this color is associated with feminist movements these days, purple historically speaks of wisdom and creativity. It has an embedded message of ambition due to its cultural references to royalty and the clergy. You may ask yourself why if black is associated with the luxurious, we say that purple is the color of royalty. Well, the answer to that question we have to speak about a dye named Tyrian purple , with an insanely costly procedure that only allowed the extremely wealthy population to wear clothes in that color.

Changing perspectives, we can speak of the purple color from a creative aspect as a color that boosts inspiration. Its link to spirituality is well-documented, and one of its most controversial usages is the work of artist Francis Bacon in Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X . Also, purple is a color associated with courage. The Purple Heart medal is a military decoration of the United States awarded in the name of the US President to those wounded or killed during service. 

The shades of purple can evoke exotic perceptions, from wine to delicate flowers such as orchids to precious gemstones such as Amethyst. 

Since it’s not a color felt as natural by humans, we can create vibrant presentations on different topics that take the user away from conventionalism. 

Brown is a color commonly used for outdoor adventures or to introduce all-terrain experiences in isolated places. Being the color usually associated with earth, it’s not a surprise to find the values of strength and reliability linked to the color brown, even if it’s not a color easy to manage as it leans towards both orange and yellow. 

Warmth, comfort, and security are feelings transmitted by the color brown for its close relationship with nature. That could explain why security firms opt to include brown in their branding strategies and pair it with black to enforce the importance of “securing the valuables.” 

To apply it in presentation design, it is a color that must be balanced in a complementary or split complementary scheme, preferably with a blue tint. Orange can bring far too much energy to the scene, so use the combination of brown + orange with caution (the same rules apply with brown + yellow).

Depending on where its hue leans, we can say orange can be an uplifting color on an extremely attention-seeking one. The strong-red oranges are used for attention, such as in signage, whereas yellow-orange speaks of happiness, of being carefree. The “ideal” orange – such as the one in the photo above – is a color that transmits the feeling of energy, leading parcel delivery companies to use it for their marketing strategies. 

As a highly energetic color, it’s often found in uniforms for sports, mascots, energy drinks, etc. People associate orange with summer and autumn: spectacular sunsets, orange juice, flowers, and so on. For the Asiatic culture, orange is a spiritual color that speaks of meditation, leaving materialism behind and Buddha. For Americans, orange is linked to Thanksgiving and Halloween. 

Thankfully, orange is a color easy to pair in most scenarios as it blends with a multitude of colors. Still, we recommend it to mute the pure orange, opting for a sophisticated shade of it and leaving the intense orange hues as accent colors. 

Last but not least, we will speak about the pink color. It is a color associated with the feeling of kindness, love, and femininity. A broad range of shades transmits different messages: whereas pastel pinks can evoke tenderness, a vibrant shade of pink such as magenta can be observed as aggressive by some audiences. 

Joyful, pink is a girly tone that makes you feel integrated. As if you achieved your most desired dreams and you celebrate the outcome surrounded by your loved ones. For artists, it is a vibrant color that contrasts with often “dull” colors such as gray and black for interesting composition values.

If you can look aside the simplistic “girl” color concept, it’s a refreshing color that instantly takes people to a feeling of inspiration and renewal. 

Case studies for color theory

In this final section of the article, we will use four different case studies to explain why some color selections are made in regard to sending the viewer a message with the presentation. Please keep in mind that most presentation templates are fully editable; therefore, if you love a design, but you don’t feel comfortable with its color range, you can change the color palette for ppt presentation by making a custom theme in PowerPoint .

This first case study involves a medium-sized company that seeks to automatize its candidate selection process for the HR department through AI technology. As not every single member in the managerial area is convinced about this idea, the HR department prepared what’s known as a force field analysis presentation . 

Thanks to the force field analysis model, the HR department presents the initiative, its driving forces (being the Pros of the initiative), and the restraining forces (the cons of this initiative) are easy to identify and represent with the help of a force field analysis slide template .

In a Complementary color scheme, the elements that weigh on the decision are represented in two colors: sapphire blue for the driving forces and orange-red to expose the restraining forces. Since we talk about something corporative, the same sapphire blue was used for the initiative area, not influencing the palette with another color.

Conducting the analysis from a color psychology perspective, the orange-red is attention-grabbing enough for people not to ignore the cons that this project can experience over time, whilst also reflecting an energetic resistance to change. Sapphire blue, on the other hand, speaks of professionalism. Of trusting the process in the decision to make since it’s time to move on and pursue bigger horizons – and the current selection process for new personnel is both time-demanding and often not tailored for certain departments.

In our second case study, a waste management company is visiting potential customers to offer their services whilst also educating company owners on the importance of treating production waste with the care it requires. 

This next slide introduces the ecology of waste management, in which, depending on the original materials, there are multiple methods to repurpose waste rather than piling it up in open outdoor spaces.  

The waste management presentation template used features a Monochrome color scheme in shades and tones of green. The greens used are not also randomly selected:

• Dark green used in the title and accent effects speaks of the fact that waste can be repurposed into money, and that fact can easily become a driving force for customers to change their waste management policies.
• Bright green in the accent sections and number of slides refers to rebirth. Of giving new life to what’s considered decay.
• Pale green in the cogwheels and placeholder text percentages is a symbol of peace. Remembers the audience that being mindful about the final destination of our production processes is part of having a corporate social responsibility.
• Mint green is a signal for refreshment. Of lifting taxing decisions and outsourcing from people knowledgeable in the subject.

With this case study, you can appreciate how slide color schemes can reinforce the message to transmit without filler words.

The next case study to analyze comes from a group of young software developers presenting their skills to a customer for a web design project. Despite not having a large trajectory in the industry, their team is well-balanced between experienced developers and creative designers to meet the demands of their clients.

This programming presentation template is the chosen asset to introduce their services visually compellingly while also listing their project portfolio.

A fine example of a Split Complementary color scheme, no doubt. The color selected was yellow-red, using blue and violet as the other two colors that made up this scheme. Since yellow is far too intense, it’s left as the accent color for some sections, and the background is a darker blue leaning towards blue-violet. The vector images follow suit by combining the colors selected in the palette, using gradients and lighter tints. 

The question becomes now: what about the aqua tone? Sometimes, designers can combine color schemes inside a design to balance the overall composition. Since yellow would be too much attention-grabbing, and the presence of blues and violets is covered, there is a secondary usage of the Analogous color scheme, opting for a tint of the blue-green next to the blue color. The discrete way in which it was used brings life to the image and centers the vision in the placeholder text area. 

To conclude this guide, it is essential to answer a common question: how do I pick the colors for my slide design project?

For some people, inspiration about a word, a concept, or a product to present directly leads to the color selection of the main color – or at least an indicator of which hue would work best. Then, the selected color scheme helps to build up the entire color palette for the presentation. In some other cases, an image can become the leading source of inspiration. That’s the reason why you should check tools such as Design Seeds’ Instagram Profile or even Pinterest. 

Online tools can help us easily come up with good colors for presentations. Some recommendations for this are Coolors or COLOURlovers . Although… what if you already got inspiration from a presentation you attended but don’t know which colors were used? This incredible tool may cheer you up: Site Palette , a Google Chrome extension that gives you the entire list of colors used, with their HEX values to reproduce them in your designs.

Check out our complete tutorial on how to make a PowerPoint Presentation .

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How to Choose Background and Text Colors for PowerPoint Presentation

Colors play an important role in enhancing the visual appeal of your slides and conveying information. However, with countless color options available, it can be overwhelming to make the right choices.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the art of selecting the perfect background and text colors for your PowerPoint presentations. It will ensure they leave a lasting impact on your audience. 

Learn practical tips and insights to make your presentations visually appealing. We’ll also cover color psychology and how to match backgrounds with text. It’s a step-by-step guide to improving your presentation skills.

Get ready to make your slides stand out with our expert advice!

Importance Of Color Choices 

Colors significantly impact how we perceive and understand information in presentations. The psychological effects of colors play a crucial role in influencing our emotions. Knowing the significance of color choices can make presentations more effective and interesting. 

Certain colors evoke specific emotions and feelings. For example, warm colors such as red and orange energize and grab attention, making them ideal for highlighting important points. At the same time, cool colors like green have a calming effect and can be useful for conveying a sense of trust and stability.

Color contrast is also essential for improving comprehension. High contrast between background and text colors enhances readability, ensuring the information is easily absorbed. 

However, some color combinations can hinder comprehension. Using low-contrast colors, like light gray text on a white background, can strain the eyes and make the content difficult to read. It’s important to strike the right balance to ensure that your audience can effortlessly grasp the message you want to convey.

The importance of color choices in presentations cannot be overstated. When you understand the psychological effects of colors and use high-contrast combinations, you can create visually appealing slides that effectively convey your message to your audience.

Effective Background Colors

• Blue : Known for cultivating a sense of trust, calmness, and professionalism. Blue is widely used in business and educational presentations. Its versatility makes it suitable for various contexts, from corporate meetings to academic settings.
• Purple : Purple is usually associated with creativity and imagination. Also, it can add sophistication to your slides. It is a great choice for presentations related to art, design, and innovative concepts. It also represents royalty, wisdom, spirituality, and mystery.
• Green : Green symbolizes growth, harmony, and nature. It is perfect for presentations about sustainability, health, and environmental topics. It helps create a positive and refreshing atmosphere, making it suitable for inspiring and motivating your audience.
• White : A classic and timeless option, white backgrounds provide a clean and minimalist look, drawing attention to the content. It is excellent for professional settings, formal presentations, and showcasing visuals.
• Gray : Often used as a neutral backdrop, gray complements other colors and prevents distractions. It can add a touch of formality to your presentation, making it suitable for business reports and data-heavy slides.

Remember, it’s important to consider your presentation’s context and content. Make sure there is enough contrast between the background and text colors. Only then can people read it easily.

Also, consider how different colors might make your audience feel. Choose colors that match the mood and goal of your presentation.

Text Colors For Maximum Impact 

Contrast is key when selecting text colors. One of the most common mistakes in color selection for presentation slides is a need for more contrast between the background and text colors. If you want the audience to see the text on the screen, it must be a high-contrast color with the background. As a result, the text appears to float above the background rather than blend in with it.

Using lighter text colors like white, light gray, or pastel shades for a dark background creates a striking contrast that makes the text pop. This high contrast ensures clear visibility of the content and prevents eye strain. It’s particularly useful when presenting in dimly lit rooms or on large screens.

Conversely, darker text colors like black, dark blue, or deep brown for a light background create a sharp contrast that enhances readability. The dark text stands out vividly against the bright background, making it easy for the audience to follow the presentation, even from a distance.

Remember, the goal is to ensure that the text is readable without causing any discomfort to the audience. Maintaining a strong contrast between text and background can effectively convey your message and keep your audience engaged throughout the presentation.

Common Mistakes In Color Choice 

Red and Green- Using red and green together can be tough for color-blind people. Many people need help telling these colors apart, leading to confusion and misunderstandings.

Another mistake is using too many bright and clashing colors. It can make the presentation look messy and unprofessional. Also, using text and background colors that need more contrast can make it hard for everyone to read the content. 

To avoid these pitfalls:

• Consider using color combinations easily distinguishable by individuals with color blindness.
• Opt for high-contrast colors for text and background to enhance readability.
• Use a color palette with limited colors that complements the presentation’s theme and maintains consistency.

Test your color choices on different devices and screens to ensure they appear as intended. By being mindful of color choices and their potential impact, you can create visually appealing presentations that effectively communicate your message to all viewers.

Color Schemes For Professional Presentations

• Grey and Yellow : Grey represents neutrality and sophistication, while yellow symbolizes energy and optimism. They create a balanced and modern look suitable for business and corporate presentations.
• Blue and White : Blue is widely associated with trust, reliability, and professionalism, making it a popular choice for business settings. White complements blue, providing a clean and minimalist backdrop that enhances readability. This combination exudes a sense of clarity and authority, making it suitable for formal presentations and reports.

Using professional color combinations makes the presentation look nice and put together. It shows that the presenter is skilled and trustworthy, which helps build a good impression with the audience. Also, these colors are easy on the eyes so that the audience can focus on the content without problems.

The Role Of Color Psychology in Presentations 

Understanding the fundamental concepts of color psychology allows you to strategically use colors to deliver your message and impact your audience.

Warm colors grab the audience’s attention and emphasize essential points in the presentation. For example, highlighting key statistics or impactful quotes in red can draw the eye and make the information stand out.

Conversely, cool colors like blue, green, and purple are often used in professional settings to convey a sense of reliability and credibility. 

Neutral colors, like gray and white, can be used as background colors to enhance readability. Combining neutral colors with bolder accents can create an elegant and professional look.

Colors have a strong effect on how people feel and think. Companies pick colors that match their personality for logos and ads. Using these colors in presentations can help people recognize the brand. People remember the message better. By knowing how colors make us feel, presenters can use them wisely to get the audience’s attention. 

Customizing Your Presentation’s Color Scheme 

Step 1: Launch PowerPoint and open the presentation you want to customize.

Step 2: Tap on the “Design” tab at the top of the screen. It will display various design options.

Step 3: Select “Customize Colors…” from the drop-down menu to open the ‘Create New Theme Colors’ box.

Step 4: Choose the colors you want for your slide by clicking the color button next to the item. Select a new color from the pull-down menu if you want to change it.

Step 5: The Colors dialog box’s Standard tab displays a total of 127 colors, as well as white, black, and various shades of gray. Tap the Custom tab to use a color that doesn’t appear in the dialog box.

Step 6: Click Reset to start again using the colors you used when you first started.

Step 7: To save your customized color palette, enter a name in the Name area below and tap Save. The palette you saved gets added to the pull-down menu’s Colors gallery.

By following the above steps, you can customize the color scheme of your PowerPoint presentation.

Start Working On Your PowerPoint Background And Text Colors

We must consider the importance of background and text colors in PowerPoint presentations. Selecting the right color schemes can impact the audience’s perception and engagement. 

Aim for high contrast between text and background to ensure readability. And avoid potential pitfalls that may hinder comprehension. Professional color schemes, like gray and yellow, can elevate the presentation’s impact. It creates a polished and cohesive visual experience.

By making thoughtful color choices, presenters can craft attractive PowerPoint presentations. These well-designed visuals communicate their message, fostering better understanding.  The strategic use of colors makes the presentation impactful, leaving a lasting impression on viewers.

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Combining colors in PowerPoint – Mistakes to avoid

By Robert Lane

Why do some color combinations work so well in your presentations, and why do other color combinations make your presentations difficult to watch? PowerPoint expert Robert Lane explains how to combine colors to make effective and professional-looking slides.

With PowerPoint You have all the Tools but ...

Newer versions of PowerPoint have marvelous tools for helping even the “artistically challenged” among us get beyond bullet points and create effective, graphically appealing, downright professional-looking visual slides. That’s fantastic! Now the question is … how should we use those tools? Most of us have never been trained as graphic artists and don’t necessarily know the rules for making visually attractive and meaningful content.

Because the discussion of “effective visual communication” might fill an entire book, let’s narrow the focus here to concentrate solely on the use of color in PowerPoint. What are good, and not so good, ways of using color on slides?

Color Groups

One way to approach colors is to classify them into two broad groups: warm and cool colors (Figure 1). Reds, oranges, and yellows are referred to as warm colors. They tend to pop out and attract attention—especially a bright red. Greens, blues, and purples are cool colors. They tend to recede into the background and draw less attention, especially darker shades. White and very light colors also catch the eye, whereas black and very dark colors generally are less noticeable.

Figure 1 – Color Groups

Note, however, that above effects are not absolutely fixed. They can flip. The quantity and contrast of one color compared to another also comes into play. For example, if we place small black shapes on a solid white slide background, the black shapes pop out as more noticeable, versus the sea of white around them (Figure 2). In this case, the brain is more interested in figuring out if shapes communicate some form of meaning or pattern, rather than merely reacting to their color characteristics. Not surprisingly, some optical illusions take advantage of this phenomenon.

Figure 2 – Color Quantity and Contrast

Consider the color groups, as well as quantity and contrast, when combining colors on slides. It’s pretty safe to combine warm colors with each other and shades of brown (Figure 3) or cool colors with each other and shades of gray (Figure 4). White, black, and beige are neutral colors and go well with all colors in either group.

Figure 3 – Warm Colors Group

Figure 4 – Cool Colors Group

Where most PowerPoint designers get into trouble is combining colors across the warm/cool boundary. Absolutely NEVER do what is depicted in Figures 5 and 6. If you stare at either of these images for very long, your eyes begin screaming. They have trouble distinguishing interactions between the color wavelengths, resulting in fatigue and discomfort. Mixing bright blues and reds is a terrible practice to inflict upon audiences, and unfortunately it happens all too often. The same goes with mixing reds and greens.

Figure 5 – Red and Blue Color Combinations Cause Eye Strain

Figure 6 – Red and Green Color Combinations also Cause Eye Strain

A red and green combination also brings up the issue of color blindness, which apparently affects approximately 7 percent of men and 1 percent of women. Inability to notice the difference between red and green colors is the most common form of color blindness. For example, let’s say you place green text on a red background, as in Figure 6. If the text color’s shading (amount of darkness) has little contrast with the background color’s shading, some viewers will not be able to read that text at all! Avoid such problems by never mixing these two colors, especially in a text versus background combination.

Julie Terberg, a graphic designer and PowerPoint MVP, also points out that using the themes in PowerPoint can make your color combination choices easier (Figure 7). Theme colors have been chosen to look good together (although, still use caution) and to work well in both light and dark presentation environments.

Figure 7 – Using Theme Colors Make Your Choices Easier

The Forgiving Nature of Color Gradients

Interestingly enough, the process of combining colors is much more forgiving when using gradients—colors that fade into each other. Beginning with version 2010, PowerPoint offers a greatly improved, user-friendly interface for making gradients, by the way (Figure 8).

Figure 8 – Adding a Gradient to a Shape

Because nature regularly blends colors this way (think of a sunset), we are used to seeing colors gradually transition from one hue to the next, meaning that you can get away with combining just about any color set and still end up with a reasonably attractive and professional look. Just make sure the transitions are gradual.

Try blending colors to make a custom-designed slide background, a decorative shape—perhaps for a sectional background (Figure 9) or navigation button (Figure 10)—or even jazzy, 3-D text (Figure 11).

Figure 9 – Purple, Gold and Gray Gradient inside a Shape

Figure 10 – Gradient-filled Shape used as a Navigation Button

Figure 11 – Gradient-filled PowerPoint Text

Color and Text Considerations

Going back to the issues of color quantity and contrast (black dots on the white background), those considerations are especially important when slides contain text. Unless such text exists in a navigation button or is purely decorative, generally the goal is for audience members to be able to read it, right? Therefore, opting for a simple background that contrasts sharply with the text color helps the message pop out and attract attention (Figure 12).

Figure 12 – Text Color should Contrast Sharply with a Background

Placing text on top of pictures is popular but can be tricky because controlling the contrast then becomes more difficult. The solution, again, is to make sure the text color contrasts as much as possible with a majority of the picture’s colors and then add a distinct shadow or glow to the text (Figure 13).

Figure 13 – Shadow on Text Helps it Appear more Distinct on top of a Picture

General Color Issues

Here are a few additional PowerPoint-related color tips we’ve discovered over the years:

Using red text is almost never a good idea. That particular color, of all colors, tends to washout when projected on a screen if any kind of unwanted ambient light also hits the screen—perhaps from sunlight streaking through a window or glare from a poorly aimed stage light.

Unless there is a particularly good reason for using brightly colored text … don’t. Stick with white or light beige on a dark background or black (or otherwise very dark color) on a light background. Your slides will have a more professional appearance as a result.

Stay away from gradients in text unless the words are large and intended to be primarily decorative in nature.

When using gradients, simplicity is your friend. Limit the number of colors, and, whenever possible, try using combinations that are readily found in nature for maximum appeal.

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10 Color Palettes to Nail Your Next Presentation

Bring your a-game to your next pitch meeting with these sure-to-dazzle color palettes..

Color is a powerful design tool. The right scheme can energize and motivate, soothe and inspire. With that in mind, we’ve put together a batch of ten eye-catching color palettes, each intended to have a different psychological effect on your presentation audience.

Perhaps you’re a young startup and need to excite potential investors , or maybe you want to ensure that viewers remain focused on important data. Whatever the style of presentation or pitch, you’ll find a color palette that suits your presentation needs in the list below.

• Introducing Creative Flow on Shutterstock Enterprise
• 7 Creative Tips for When You’re in a Slump

Simply take a note of the HEX codes in these inspiring color palettes, and apply your swatches to backgrounds , typography , or sales presentation templates for your next PowerPoint presentation or Google Slides pitch.

Now, let’s get started! It’s time to nail that pitch.

License this image via Pikoso.kz .

What Are the Best Colors for Presentations?

The best colors to use in PowerPoint , Google Slides, and other presentation software can vary widely depending on your audience, brand, and what you’re trying to achieve with the presentation.

A pitch for a new client might require exciting, inspiring color choices that help your audience to feel energized , while a data-heavy presentation to long-standing investors might require a more stable and reassuring color scheme.

• 10 Psychological Color Palettes to Win Friends and Influence People
• How to Use the Color Wheel to Build a Brand Palette

Below, you’ll find 10 color palettes for presentations that tap into the power of color psychology , helping you to choose colors that will always work in your favor.

These stylish color palettes can work for a variety of presentation purposes, like corporate reports, brand launches , and Q1 forecasts.

Scroll down to find the perfect presentation palette to help you bring the power of color to your next pitch.

1. The Perfect Color Palette to Energize Your Audience

Orange has been proven to promote energy and appetite in viewers, so it’s the perfect color choice for presentations that need to have an upbeat feel.

To keep your audience engaged throughout a long presentation, it helps to balance orange’s energy with the soothing, expansive mood of violet blue .

Blue-sky thinking is blue for good reason—this is a color that provokes inspiration and openness to new ideas.

To keep your energized palette crisp and clean, turn to ice white and pitch black to ensure your text remains crisp and legible. 

2. The Best Color Palette to Calm and Reassure the Room

Sometimes, it’s more important to calm and reassure your audience than to energize or surprise them. Presentations focused on mental well being , health , or wellness wouldn’t benefit from a neon palette , for example.

Instead, bring a zen mood to the boardroom with this palette of soothing hues. Spring green , mulberry purple, terracotta, and blue gray have a grounding effect and mimic the soothing colors found in nature to create an ultra-relaxing effect. 

3. The Perfect Color Palette to Boost Confidence

Red is traditionally the color of confidence, proven to make viewers feel stronger and more self-assured in its presence. However, pure red can be overtly aggressive, and the forceful effect of the color can be heightened on bright screens. Much better to temper red’s aggression with softer red orange , fuchsia , and shell pink .

This is still a highly confident palette with its graduation of warm hues, and its assertion is even stronger when paired with mysterious and authoritative plum purple .

4. The Best Color Palette to Appeal to Corporate Businesses

This color scheme gives a nod to the traditional palettes of the financial and legal world. Bottle green and cognac brown are teamed with dark racing-green and old gold for an established and luxurious effect.

Corporate presentations can be difficult to enliven, as they require a degree of formality and convention. However, this palette steps away from oft-used navy blue toward something more interesting.

Evocative of leather and velvet, this is a cocooning and moneyed palette that will help corporate clients feel like you understand their formal world. 

License this image via AlonaPhoto .

5. The Best Palette to Look Cool and On-Trend

Many startups, entrepreneurs, and young brands want to appeal to Gen Z audiences , and they need to have a cool color palette to match.

Whether you’re presenting a new product launch or looking to entice an on-the-pulse angel investor, this violet and neon palette will cement your cool credentials.

Look to urban colors, such as neons and grays, to create presentation slides with an ultra-cool mood.

This urban-inspired presentation palette combines deep and inky violet with acid lime yellow for a high-contrast effect, while concrete gray and moody black provide a neutral offset.

6. The Perfect Color Palette to Look Innovative

Young companies or startups pitching for their first round of investments need a palette that will communicate a spirit of innovation and fresh thinking. A perfect color palette for tech businesses or science startups, this palette has a futuristic, forward-looking mood.

Purple is the most intellectual and mysterious of all colors, making it a good fit for businesses offering something a little different from the norm, especially in the tech sector .

Neon pink is an unexpected choice for work presentations, but here it’s the perfect companion to purple and violet blue, bringing energy and a youthful mood. 

7. The Best Color Palette to Appear High-End

Elevate your high-end presentations with this luxurious color scheme that borrows from vintage color schemes of the 1930s and 1940s.

If you’re pitching for a high-end brand or simply want to bring an elegant mood to your presentation slides, this claret and copper scheme will help your PowerPoint templates feel opulent and expensive.

Dark brick red and olive green are traditional establishment colors that give a nod to beautiful brick architecture and vintage uniforms.

This affluent color palette would also be a good fit for the hospitality, travel, or luxury goods sectors. Team with metallic backgrounds and crisp white text for simple luxury.

8. The Best Color Palette to Improve Focus

If you have vitally important data or a specific message you want your viewers to remember, consider this presentation palette of focus-promoting colors that will prevent your audience from mid-pitch window gazing.

Blue and green are the two colors most associated with improving focus and concentration, with blue promoting expansive thinking and green providing a harmonic, nature-inspired mood.

In this business color palette, rich teal combines both of these hues for a serious focus hit. Earthy burnt orange prevents teal from feeling lethargic, while giving the palette a grounded edge that feels serious and cerebral. 

9. The Best Color Palette to Promote Sustainability

As sustainability is a central concern for many businesses today, it might be in your interest to give your presentations an environmental edge.

While businesses are often advised to avoid greenwashing , for the purpose of presentations, green is still the most reliable color for communicating environmentally-themed messages. It helps to immediately situate your audience within an eco-friendly mindset .

Whether you want to discuss how your company can become more eco-friendly or promote a sustainable product to a potential buyer, this fresh and verdant palette will give your slides a nature-inspired mood.

Emerald green , sage, and deep bottle green are made crisp and contemporary when teamed with chalk white.

10. The Perfect Color Palette to Boost Creativity

We could all do with a little more creativity in our working day, and you can turn to selective color choices to boost your weekly brainstorming session.

For presentations that need to appear creative or boost the creative potential of your audience, bright colors are stimulating, expressive, and promote a sense of childlike play and experimentation.

This is a colorful pick-me-up scheme for work-weary souls—a perfect presentation color palette for team-building days, ideation sessions, or for subjects that are more outside-the-box than usual.

Orange and pink perk up the palette with warm tones , while viridian green and azure blue bring a fresh, tropical feel to this fun, creative color palette.

License this cover image via VISTA by Westend61 .

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9 Beautiful Color Palettes for Designing Powerful PowerPoint Slides

Anuj Malhotra

Color is fascinating. It is stimulating. It is like the universe itself- Infinite.

No matter how much you read on colors and their meanings, color theories, color wheel and types of color schemes , importance of color in design and what not, it still appears fresh and enlightening. Such is the power of colors- it makes you hungry for more knowledge, more thinking, more feeling and literally more hungry if you use warm colors like the exciting yellow and orange at an eating place. Even more romantic: just recall the abundance of colors and the romantic energy they evoked in La La Land!

Source- YouTube

So when we say, “Color plays an important role in design”, it is actually an understatement. It plays a huge role. It evokes a range of emotions, helps our eye navigate smoothly across the design, and sets the tone for the overall message you want to convey.

Unfortunately, as much as colors and their combinations are put to a wonderful use in web design and graphic design, they are grossly neglected in the presentation business. Half of the presentations are still reminiscent of stone age- dot points and essays thrown on white slide. The other half uses the safe blue (nothing wrong in that as blue represents professionalism) but all the time blue, seriously? Audience begins to feel blue.

P.S. Did you know Blue is the world’s favorite color ! It is! But I can place a bet of million dollars (not that I have it) that it is not the above blue. This is PowerPoint’s default color when you insert a shape or SmartArt.

It’s time to get creative while using colors in presentation slides! Forget about your brand colors if they are not exciting. Change them too. We desperately need to use this powerful design element and nonverbal communication tool to bring our presentations to life! But how?

We have done the hard work and found 9 awesome color palettes that would work wonders for presentations. Many are a beautiful combination of warm and cool colors (warm colors being red, yellow and orange that seem to approach us while cool colors being violet, blue and green that appear to recede from us). Also sharing the inspiration behind these color palettes. Let’s devour them one by one:

Also Read : A Super-Fast Guide to Business Plan Templates

9 Creative Color Combinations You Can Steal for Your Slides

Color palette #1- powerfully memorable (red and grey).

This color palette comprises basically 2 colors- red and grey and shades of them. This high contrast color scheme is applicable to all types of presentations, especially where you need to pitch your products or services. Red adds energy to the content and the slide, while grey grounds the slide, makes it look professional and lets red be the centre of attraction.

Red is also a great color for a brand since it signifies warmth, confidence and energy. Being such a memorable, emotionally intense color and having high visibility, it boosts brand recognition, and hence, is an integral part of bold color palettes. Here’s the color palette for you:

Download this Color Palette

We have also provided the darker variations of each color (called as Shades in color terminology) and lighter versions (called tint) in case you need to highlight or tone down a certain color based on your requirements and company branding.

P.S. To use such color palettes, simply save them and use the Eyedropper tool from the Color menu in PowerPoint:

If you want the exact color code in case you are using an older version of PowerPoint, you’ll have to manually enter the RGB color values for each hue. Simply click the More Colors… option given above the Eyedropper option and manually enter these values:

• Color 1- Red (Red- 224, Green- 69, Blue- 86)
• Color 2- Dark Red (Red- 43, Green- 21, Blue- 21)
• Color 3- Grey (Red- 242, Green- 242, Blue- 242)
• Color 4- Dark Grey (Red- 127, Green- 127, Blue- 127)

Inspiration Behind this Color Palette:

DDB Canada created a heartfelt campaign for The Historica Dominion Institute and in support of The Memory Project to pay tribute to its soldiers on 11/11/11. The sombre grey and lots of white space evokes the vacuum caused by the absence of those soldiers. The use of a single bright color- red- creates a dramatic effect and evokes awe in the viewers. Here’s the brilliant print ad:

Source- bestadsontv.com- The Historica-Dominion Institute: Remember 11/11/11

Do not draw the meaning that this combination is for special occasions. Every presentation is special for you. You want your message to be remembered. So use light grey as background and red in the foreground to highlight the most important phrase, icon..basically the core of that slide. Here’s a real estate PPT slide that applies such color palettes beautifully:

Also notice how dark grey has been used for text instead of the standard black. It creates a harmonious look and feel, and the slide overall looks creative and professional at the same time.

Give a Red-Carpet Look with this Color Scheme:

When following color palettes, you can switch the background and foreground colors- red as background and white or light grey as foreground. That will give a red-carpet look to your presentation:

Presentation Rule To Remember: Have High Contrast for Easy Readability

By and large, this rule will save you from making color disasters:

• Light Background Colors- Dark Foreground
• Dark Background Colors- Light Foreground

There was another color in the color scheme- dark red, almost resembling brown which is a very masculine color. You can use that too where you need to use color other than red; as we did in the slide below:

Alternatively, we could replace the serious dark red with the happy bright red in the above slide and use a shade of grey for the remaining 28% as we do not want to highlight that portion. We want to highlight 82% and since red is a perfect accent color (accent colors are colors used for emphasis); let’s use the same:

Which slide would perform better? Tell us later when you are done with this article; let’s move on to our second color palette:

Color Palette #2- Vibrant and Young (Plum, Orange, Teal & Grey)

Why do presentations have to look “old”? Why have they become synonymous with draining life out of audience? Too much text. Check. Bad design and layout. Check. Devoid of color or dull colors. Check, check. Well, for those who cannot chop off content due to some reason and have limited design and layout knowledge, we published an article on 15 Ways To Turn A Very Text-Heavy, Bullet-Ridden Slide Into Amazing! For the last problem i.e. dull colors, we are publishing this article. This color scheme (comprising plum, orange, teal and grey) screams young and is in no way less professional than any other color scheme:

Grab this Color Palette

Color codes for the hues:

• Color 1- Plum (Red- 184, Green- 13, Blue- 72)
• Color 2- Orange (Red- 242, Green- 151, Blue- 36)
• Color 3- Dark Teal (Red- 43, Green- 106, Blue- 108)
• Color 4- Dark Grey (Red- 64, Green- 64, Blue- 64)

The beauty herself and icon of the young generation- Emma Watson- stuns in a color-oozing ad by Lancôme, owned by L'oreal. She is the brand ambassador of Lancôme and her vibrance is matched by the beautiful spring colors in the ad below which you would have surely looked even before reading all this text.

Courtesy: Lancôme

Warm orange, seductive plum, innocent pink, mysterious dark teal- the above ad has all the face-turning colors. Doesn’t look relevant to presentations? That’s what I thought too before I extracted the colors and applied it to my slides. Boy, they look so vibrant!

The dark grey adds a professional touch while the plum and orange colors inject interest into the slide. Plum, very similar to purple, is a rich color that is associated with royalty and romance. Orange is the color of joy and creativity while Teal is the color of sophistication, confidence and serenity. If you feel combining these colors is creating a color riot, just choose any 2 contrasting colors from this palette and make your slides rock like these:

Color plays a very important role of grouping elements here. The reader can easily read the content alternatively as the process goes, or read the dark teal group and orange group separately. A picture will form in his head and if asked to recall the process later, he will remember the color blocks and quickly recall the content too.

The color palettes you choose depend on your preferences totally. That said, try using the brightest color sparingly or else it would overwhelm the audience and overpower everything. In the slide below, we reserved the plum color for the title alone:

Have you ever seen any Human Resource presentation so vibrant before? I never had. Let’s move to color palette 3:

Color Palette #3- Retro Rocks (Dark Blue, Tan & Green)

As conflicting as it may sound, your presentations can look old but it has to be stylishly old! Yes, I mean retro. Who doesn’t like the retro look and feel whether it is fashion, art or presentations for that matter. Here’s a color palette (comprising dark blue, tan and green colors) to give that retro vibe to your presentations!

Download this Color Scheme

Here’s the color code for each hue:

• Color 1- Dark Blue (Red- 4, Green- 37, Blue- 58)
• Color 2- Tan (Red- 225, Green- 221, Blue- 191)
• Color 3- Green (Red- 76, Green- 131, Blue- 122)

“Home is wherever you park.” A beautiful vintage poster I came across on the web immediately caught my attention thanks to its classic and nostalgic color scheme.

It’s dreamy quality comes from the dark blue sky, the green ground and the moon and the stars. The best color palettes mirror real life- they are relatable and thus more “human”. Since Dark Blue signifies power and knowledge, it is a perfect color for corporate presentations. Let’s apply it to our slides and see how it looks:

The slide looks a poster, doesn’t it! What better do you want. Each PowerPoint slide should be worthy of sharing on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. Since the look is so classic, your presentations also get the timeless look and feel. Here’s another presentation slide that is so poster-ish and larger than life:

Color Palette #4- Dominating Duo (Teal & Red)

This brings two of my favorite design colors together- Teal and Red. Color experts, interior designers and graphic designers can’t get enough of Teal. It is trendy and unique- neither blue nor green. It appears as if it has been discovered only recently, especially where presentations are concerned. I see Teal dominating infographics but can’t recall even one in presentations!  

Teal, as we said before, signifies trustworthiness, serenity and reliability. Complementing it and conflicting it is the energetic and sexy red. Use the lighter version of Teal which is Aqua as your slide background and you have a soothing, calm effect while red grabs the audience eyeballs.

Use the Eyedropper tool to extract these colors or apply the following color code:

• Color 1- Aqua (Red- 131, Green- 211, Blue- 212)
• Color 2- Dark Teal (Red- 45, Green- 129, Blue- 131)
• Color 3- Dark Red (Red- 145, Green- 12, Blue- 7)
• Color 4- Orange (Red- 244, Green- 129, Blue- 83)

A movie poster. Didn’t know my search for comedy movies would land me to the colorful and lively movie poster of Nacho Libre . The red flowing cape is understood and nothing out of the box but the hero’s teal tights surely caught my attention. Red looks all the more ravishing thanks to the ample teal in the background. Have you watched this movie? If you judge a book by its cover and correspondingly a movie by its poster, then the movie surely appears interesting.

Well, presentation mostly is not a comedy affair or a showbiz. But like any other visual communication, it has to attract audience attention and sustain it. Let’s replicate this color combination in our presentation slides and see how it looks:

The font is awesome but even an ordinary italic font in bold red could hardly go unnoticed. The darker shades of teal and red add mystery to the look and feel making one curious to see what comes next. This scheme is great for your Title slide and Section Header slides.

If you are using images in your text slides like in the one below, you can use just one color since the image already contains its own colors and adding teal and red would make the slide look busy. So you can use shades of teal and create a beautiful slide like the one below:

Color Palette #5- Authoritative Punch (Dark Green & Tan)

It’s said that age also influences your color preferences. Probably, the audience of your presentation is not the millennials but the investors and C-suite executives. You do not want to risk using orange and reds and appear non-serious. You want to look dead-serious and super-professional. Blue is a safe choice as I said. However, color palettes like this comprising 2 colors- Tan and Dark Green- are a better alternative and makes your slides look different from others:

Use this Color Palette Template

• Color 1- Dark Green (Red- 42, Green- 50, Blue- 46)
• Color 2- Tan (Red- 216, Green- 203, Blue- 187)
• Color 3- Blue-Gray (Red- 33, Green- 36, Blue- 39)
• Color 4- Brown (Red- 141, Green- 128, Blue- 111)

We have all searched for breathtaking wallpapers for our laptops and phones. What makes them breathtaking? Amazing landscape and colors. Here’s one such wallpaper I found on Pixabay. It is magical and mysterious. The forest dark green evokes awe, especially when it is surrounded by plenty of white space and light colors.

Let’s apply this color scheme to a serious presentation topic such as Customer Relationship Management:

Since dark green is an established army color as it camouflages with surroundings, you can leverage this association to your advantage. Use shades of green and tan in the slides that follow and give an authoritative look and feel to your presentation:

Color Palette #6- Crystal Clear (Turquoise, Teal & Blue)

If you have been using sky blue in your presentations, you can continue doing that. It is a refreshing and calming color that instantly brings to mind images of sky and sea. Also want to add a touch of sophistication to your presentations? Choose the Turquoise color instead. It is a combination of pale blue and green and brings to mind the turquoise gemstone.

Like blue, it is also refreshing and calming and symbolizes depth, stability and wisdom. More importantly, it’s crystal clarity signifies open communication, healing and emotional stability. A shade of turquoise is Teal that we used a little while back along with red. A lighter version of turquoise is aqua which when contrasted with white looks all the more pure and relaxing.

Color palettes like this one however puts turquoise against its darker shades like dark blue, teal and green to add authority, wisdom and sophistication to your presentation.

Grab this Beautiful Color Scheme

• Color 1- Turquoise (Red- 39, Green- 195, Blue- 243)
• Color 2- Dark Teal (Red- 12, Green- 113, Blue- 133)
• Color 3- Dark Teal (Red- 5, Green- 112, Blue- 145)
• Color 4- Dark Blue (Red- 3, Green- 52, Blue- 83)
• Color 4- Black (Red- 0, Green- 0, Blue- 0)

One can watch marine life for ages. The colorful beings inhabiting the crystal clear waters are a treat to watch. So, when I stumbled upon this BBC One documentary on tiny Japanese fish “pufferfish” designing a sculpture on the seabed, I was awestruck. It proved useful for my color palettes inspiration too. Here’s the cute fish:

Source- Youtube (BBC One Documentary)

Imagine this is as the background for your presentation- Lovely! The fish’s piercing black eye, dark blue shadow, the specks of green on its tail and skin wonderfully complement to create this natural color scheme. Let’s steal it for our PowerPoint presentation:

White looks the perfect contrasting color for blue. But the Teal color lends more power to the word “grow”. Of course, the typography also plays its part in reinforcing the message. By the way, if you want to add typography to your skill arsenal, do check out these 11 Typography Tweaks And Text Effects To Spice Up Your Presentation Content .

There is a lot of blue in this color palette but it won’t make anyone feel the blues. Take a look at this business slide to adapt to the right color palettes:

Color Palette #7- It’s American-ish (Red & Blue)

Fourth of July is around the corner. So why not use a color palette inspired by it.

There’s a reason America adopted red and blue along with white for its national flag. Red symbolizes courage and sacrifice, blue symbolizes vigilance and justice while white represented innocence and purity. The beloved American superheroes wear their patriotic colors with pride. See Spiderman's suit- red and blue. What about Superman and WonderWoman! Their traditional outfits too had dominantly red and blue combination.

That does not mean you have to be an American to use the color palette that we are sharing. We are using a totally different variation of red and blue. So use the following color palette without any hesitation:

Download this Dynamic Color Palette

RGB values for each hue:

• Color 1- Rose (Red- 255, Green- 86, Blue- 87)
• Color 2- Dark Teal (Red- 55, Green- 108, Blue- 138)
• Color 3- Light Orange (Red- 242, Green- 217, Blue- 187)
• Color 4- Blue-Grey (Red- 99, Green- 143, Blue- 169)

Never knew surfing on Facebook during office hours could also be productive. A video on my timeline “7 Signs You Are Perfect For Each Other” by FilterCopy got me glued with its beautiful color scheme.

Let’s apply this dynamic color scheme to our slides. Here is a slide which looks bold and powerful. There is a beautiful balance of masculinity and femininity too with dark blue and soft red.

White is a perfect contrasting color for easy readability, whether you take red and white combination or blue and white. Blue on red doesn’t look bad either. It scores a little less on readability as compared to white but if font size is not too small, you can carry off red and blue together with style like in the slide below:

Color Palette #8- Opposite Attraction (Blue & Yellow)

Opposites attract. So let’s take 2 opposite color forces- one that is attention-grabbing and one that is conservative. One that represents summer and the other winter. Yellow and blue. A warm and cool color in one single slide gives you the perfect balance- the youthful energy and the professional touch.

Use this Color Palette

Color 1- Dark Blue (Red- 2, Green- 81, Blue- 150)

Color 2- Orange/Mustard (Red- 253, Green- 179, Blue- 56)

Inspiration Behind This Color Palette:

A newsletter from an online shopping portal in my inbox coaxing me to shop for Father’s Day definitely convinced me (to steal the color palette for this article). It was perfect for the occasion as blue is considered the color of men and yellow calls for celebration.

So, if you love using blue for your presentations, please do. But try yellow or mustard this time as in the color palette and breathe life into your corporate presentations! Yellow is also the color of innovation; so we felt the color palette was perfect for this slide:

The yellow used here is not the bright yellow or the bright orange that professionals detest using. It is soft orange or mustard that does not look childish from any angle. Use shades of blue and yellow to avoid making the slides look too colorful. Notice how dark blue has been used for human face instead of a new color:

Color Palette 9- Down to Earth vs. Royal (Brown & Gold vs. Dark Purple)

How about using earthy colors for our presentation that gives an impression we are grounded in our roots! Earth tone color schemes include combination of browns and tans. The soil, clay, dirt and rocks give us neutral colors that can be used to give a down-to-earth look to our presentation. Here’s such a scheme that contains all the neutral colors except one- dark purple that is a color of royalty:

Grab this Color Scheme

According to your choice of color palettes, here are the values to get the exact hue:

• Color 1- Gold (Red- 254, Green- 174, Blue- 2)
• Color 2- Brown (Red- 110, Green- 54, Blue- 42)
• Color 3- Light Yellow (Red- 241, Green- 226, Blue- 160)
• Color 4- Dark Purple (Red- 32, Green- 12, Blue- 37)

An image of a yellow excavator on a construction site on Pixabay had all the feel-good earthy colors. You could also extract the sky blue color from this image although it is mostly covered by yellowish clouds. Wonder where we got the purple from? See the excavator’s shadow and the front portion where vehicle number is displayed:

Source: Pixabay

Let’s take the first 2 colors from such color palettes and apply this to a presentation slide- golden background and brown foreground. The gold color adds spark and prestige to the slide while the masculine brown gives power to the content:

Now, let’s apply the last 2 colors from this palette- pale yellow and dark purple. It’s a high contrast scheme and gives a royal look and feel to the slide. Let’s use the pale yellow as the background on the same slide and replace brown with purple. Which looks better?

Want to make your presentation look more royal and sophisticated? Use purple as the presentation background and use the soft yellow for your content, shapes and icons:

That’s all we had to share on color palettes with you for today. As we said in the beginning, color combinations can be infinite. Hope you exploit the power and psychology of color palettes to inject vitality into your PowerPoint presentations and other designs!

And hey, which color palette(s) did you like the most? Please give us your valuable feedback in the comments below. And if you found the article useful, spread the word. Here’s a pre-populated tweet to get you started:

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The 7 Best Color Combinations for Your Next Presentation Design

• By: Michael Dyer

Whether you’re a new presentation designer or a seasoned pro, I’m sure you’re familiar with the impact that color can have on a design. Today we’re going to look at the 7 best color combinations for your next presentation design. 

Color evokes emotion. It can inspire, create intrigue. Because color can be so influential, color is one of the most powerful tool at your disposal as a presentation designer.

With almost 18 million colors out there, the color scheme options for your next presentation are just about infinite. But don’t worry. We’re here to help.

Foundation: Color Theory and Color Wheel  

If you’re just looking for colors, you can scroll on – but if you really want to understand the why behind each of these color schemes, keep reading.

Color theory

What is Color Theory, well the IDF says that “Color theory is the collection of rules and guidelines which designers use to communicate with users through appealing color schemes in visual interfaces.”  

In basic terms – Color Theory is the science of using color to communicate.  

Color wheel

Did you know that Isaac Newton invented the color wheel? When he was 23… While that makes me feel like a failure on a personal and professional level, I’m truly grateful he created it. Here’s why:  

Newton understood how color was defined by human perception and how it came together to create eye-catching combinations, resulting in him creating the primary, secondary, and tertiary color categorizations:

Primary colors : red, yellow, blue

Secondary colors : orange, green, violet (created by mixing primary colors)

Tertiary colors : red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, red-violet (created by mixing both primary and secondary colors)

To get started, let’s split the color wheel in half. You’ll start to notice that there is a distinction between warm colors (reds, oranges, and yellows) and cool colors (blues, greens, and violets).

Warm colors typically convey sentiments of energy, brightness, or life whereas cool colors convey sentiments of calmness, grounding, or serenity.

Color Combinations

There are three basic color combinations that you need to understand.  

Complementary Color Combinations are the colors that sit on opposite sides of the color wheel. Combining these colors creates an effect of high contrast. Due to the high levels of contrast, they’re typically pretty eye catching.  

Analogous Color Combinations are every two to five colors that sit beside each other on the color wheel. These color combinations create a sensation of balance. Typically one of these colors sits in the background, while the other more dominant color sits in the foreground. 

Triadic Color Combinations or Split-Complementary are spaced evenly throughout the color wheel and tend to be more rich or vibrant in color. This color combination is typically dynamic, creating a harmonious visual contrast that pops when combined. Create a triangle on the color wheel and you’ll find your 3 triadic colors. 

Understanding the universal perceptions and relationships of colors is key to being a great artist or designer.

So here’s our list of the 7 best color combinations for your next presentation design.

Note: Naming colors is less of a science than color theory is, so we took inspiration for OPI’s nail polish names and went a little wild with these.  

1. The “Hip Tech” Combination  

Once you start looking for these purples mixed with these oranges, you’ll notice them all over the place. And for good reason, they look great together!  

2. The “Fun at the Beach” Combination  

Definitely a bit more playful than the first, but we’re expecting to see more and more pastels come into play in 2023, so don’t be surprised if you start seeing #DCF3C4 show up in a pitch deck near you.  

3. The “Australian Summer” Combination  

A pitch deck? Sales demo? New branding guidelines, our team loves this color set and we think you should too.  

4. The “Gen Z’s Easter” Combination  

As we mentioned, pastels are coming back in a big way. And we think the Gen Z’s Easter could really take flight.  

5. The “Cool April Nights” Combination  

Is it just me or do you want to bust this out on your next deck, illustration, and re-paint that boring room in your house all of these colors?  

Just me? Ok.  

6. The “Logistics Company but Cooler” Combination  

I’m going to say it – if you’re a company that does logistics or you’re a new map app, I’ve almost completed your new branding for you. That green and blue with those pinks, you’re welcome.  

7. The “This Presentation is Going to Win a Prize on Behance” Combination

We believe in saving the best for last – and while there’s a bunch of winners on this list – I think the diversity of this color combination along with where design in 2023 is going- this could be the winner.  

If you’re curious what a team of professionals could do with any of these color combinations or with your brand guidelines, let us know! We’d love to work with you on your next deck!  

Michael Dyer

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How to Edit Background Graphics in PowerPoint: Step-by-Step Guide for Effective Presentations

Editing background graphics in PowerPoint can transform a mundane presentation into something that captivates and engages your audience. We all know that a well-designed slide can significantly impact how our message is received. By using the Slide Master view, we can easily add, edit, or remove background graphics for all or specific slides, ensuring our presentation aligns with our branding and enhances visual appeal.

Perhaps you’re working on a project that requires a unique look and feel. Switching up background visuals not only boosts the slide’s attractiveness but also reinforces your brand’s identity. There are various methods to do this, such as using the Designer option, Slide Master feature, or selecting patterns and colors that reflect your brand’s theme.

Imagine presenting to an audience with slides that are not just informative but also visually compelling. The ability to customize slide backgrounds effortlessly elevates the overall quality of our presentations. Let’s dive into how we can make our slides stand out by exploring different tools and options available in PowerPoint.

• 1.1 Accessing Slide Master View
• 1.2 Customizing Slide Layouts
• 1.3 Applying a Theme or Template
• 2.1 Formatting the Slide Background
• 2.2 Working with Colors and Gradients
• 2.3 Applying Professional Background Styles
• 3.1 Inserting and Editing Images
• 3.2 Utilizing Watermarks and Logos
• 3.3 Adjusting Image Transparency and Effects
• 4.1 Maximizing the Impact of Text and Fonts
• 4.2 Designing for Readability and Accessibility
• 4.3 Fine-tuning with Advanced Slide Features

Setting Up Your Slide Master for Consistency

Creating a consistent look throughout your PowerPoint presentation involves using Slide Master. This feature allows us to standardize the appearance of all our slides, including colors, fonts, and layout.

Accessing Slide Master View

First, open your PowerPoint presentation. Navigate to the View tab on the ribbon.

Click on Slide Master . This opens the master view where we can control the slide layout and other design elements.

In this view, you’ll see thumbnails of each slide layout. By editing these, we ensure that any changes apply throughout the presentation.

Customizing Slide Layouts

Each slide layout caters to different types of content. We can adjust these layouts to fit our specific needs.

In the master view, select a layout thumbnail. We might want to add title placeholders or modify existing text boxes.

Remember, changes here affect every slide that uses this layout. Let’s add our logo to the corner, ensuring consistency on all slides.

Applying a Theme or Template

Go to the Design tab to pick a theme. Themes can drastically change the look of your presentation with one click.

We can also apply templates that offer pre-designed layouts, saving us time. Choose a theme or template relevant to our presentation’s purpose.

To apply changes across all slides, select “Apply to All.” This makes sure every part of our deck maintains the same style.

Using Slide Master helps us create polished, professional presentations easily.

Enhancing Slides with Background and Color

Enhancing slides with background graphics and colors can make a presentation visually appealing and engaging. High-quality images, color gradients, and cohesive background styles can significantly improve the overall design.

Formatting the Slide Background

Formatting the slide background is fundamental. We start by selecting the “Design” tab, then click “Format Background.” Here, we choose between a solid color , gradient fill , or inserting a picture.

Solid Color: Offers a consistent look. Use the color palette to match your presentation’s theme.

Gradient Fill: Use preset gradients or create a custom gradient by adjusting colors, direction, and angle.

Additionally, we can set the transparency and brightness levels to make text and graphics more readable.

Working with Colors and Gradients

Colors and gradients can provide depth and clarity to slides. First, choose a primary color that aligns with our theme. Use this for titles and major elements to maintain consistency.

Gradients can be adjusted using opacity settings and preset options to fine-tune the background. Custom gradients allow us to select specific colors and angles, creating a more dynamic slide.

Applying Professional Background Styles

Professional background styles elevate our presentation. We can add high-quality images as backgrounds, ensuring they don’t overwhelm the content.

To upload images, go to the “Insert” tab, select “Pictures,” and browse for our file. Setting transparency for images can help text remain readable. Watermarks are another professional element, typically with low opacity to serve as subtle background graphics.

Additionally, PowerPoint offers preset background styles under “Design.” These include combinations of patterns, textures, and color fills designed to look aesthetically pleasing and cohesive.

By effectively using background graphics, colors, and professional styles, we enhance the visual experience of our slides.

Incorporating Images and Graphics with Clarity

When working in PowerPoint, incorporating images and graphics enhances the visuals and reinforces the message. Let’s break down how to insert , edit , and apply effects to images and graphics to make your slides clear and impactful.

Inserting and Editing Images

To add a picture, go to the Insert tab , select Pictures , then choose from This Device , Stock Images , or Online Pictures . If needed, use icons or 3D models for additional visual interest.

Once an image is inserted, resize it by clicking and dragging the corners. To maintain the aspect ratio, hold the Shift key . For more precision, use the Format tab where you can crop, adjust brightness, or add artistic effects.

For example, selecting Picture Format > Crop lets you trim the image. Use Artistic Effects to create unique visuals like Color Pencil or Blur , adding a professional touch.

Utilizing Watermarks and Logos

Watermarks and logos can establish brand identity and consistency. To add a watermark , go to the View tab and select Slide Master . Insert a picture or shape, position it, and adjust its transparency from the Picture Format tab .

For logos, use Insert > Pictures . Ensure the logo is consistent in size and placed in the same position on every slide for coherence. Set the transparency if the logo is overpowering the content.

Repeat the steps on each Slide Layout to apply the logo or watermark across all slides. This step avoids the need to manually add graphics to each slide and maintains uniformity.

Adjusting Image Transparency and Effects

Adjusting transparency can create a subtle background without overshadowing main content. Select your image and go to Picture Format > Transparency to set the desired level.

Using Picture or Texture Fill found in Format Background within the Design tab offers further options. It allows tiling a small image as a pattern or using a texture for stylish backdrops.

Additionally, explore Picture Effects like Shadow, Reflection, Glow, Soft Edges, Bevel , and 3-D Rotation to add depth and dimension. Be mindful of using effects sparingly to keep the overall look clean and professional.

Expert Tips for Content and Layout Optimization

Effective content and layout optimization can transform your PowerPoint presentations, making them more engaging and easier to understand. From choosing the right fonts to leveraging advanced slide features, our tips will guide you in creating impactful slides.

Maximizing the Impact of Text and Fonts

Choosing the right font can significantly enhance your presentation. We recommend using sans-serif fonts like Arial or Calibri for readability. Avoid overly decorative fonts as they can be distracting.

Text size matters. For titles, a size of 30 points or more works best, while body text should be no smaller than 18 points .

Using bold and italic text strategically highlights important points. Remember, less is more—keep text brief to allow your audience to focus on the key message.

Alignment is key as well. Left-aligned text is generally easier to read than centered or right-aligned text.

Designing for Readability and Accessibility

Creating readable and accessible slides ensures everyone in your audience can engage with your content. Start by selecting high-contrast color schemes— dark text on a light background or light text on a dark background .

Use bullet points or numbered lists instead of long paragraphs to make information digestible.

For accessibility, ensure your slide titles are descriptive and clear. This helps screen readers interpret the content accurately. Additionally, avoid using complex or fancy word art that might not be readable by all.

We should also consider alternative text for all images and graphics, enabling screen readers to describe the visuals.

Fine-tuning with Advanced Slide Features

Microsoft PowerPoint offers advanced features that can take your slides to the next level. For example, using the “Design Ideas” tool can provide creative layout suggestions.

Leverage the Slide Master to maintain consistency across your presentation. This tool allows you to edit background graphics, fonts, and other design elements globally.

Transitions and animations can add flair when used sparingly. Opt for subtle transitions such as “Fade” or “Appear” to keep the focus on your content.

Don’t forget to use SmartArt graphics for creating diagrams and flowcharts. They provide a professional look while simplifying the presentation of complex information.

Pro Tip: Regularly preview your slides in Slide Show mode to ensure they look as expected on the big screen.

Related posts:

• How to Embed a YouTube Video in PowerPoint: Step-by-Step Guide
• How to Add a Video to PowerPoint: Step-by-Step Tutorial
• How to Add Speaker Notes in PowerPoint for Effective Presentations
• How to Add Narration to PowerPoint: Step-by-Step Guide for Effective Presentations
• How to Add Slide Numbers in PowerPoint: A Step-by-Step Guide
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The Best Free PowerPoint Templates to Download in 2022

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By Al Boicheva

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Updated: May 18, 2022

If you wish to pair your well-prepared speech with an equally engaging visual presentation , PowerPoint is software that offers many opportunities for creativity. In today’s article, same as every year, we have selected for you a collection of the best free PowerPoint templates to download in 2022 . All are fully customizable. Most of the freebies are multipurpose and you could adapt them to any kind of project. However, we also included presentations suitable for more specialized topics such as education, online teaching, business, and more.

In the meantime, we also refreshed and updated all links for the selection of the best free templates for PowerPoint that you can download in 2021 , all still high-quality designs that check out well in 2022.

1. Free Multipurpose Business PowerPoint Presentation

This is a dark blue and grey business presentation suitable for multiple purposes. It’s especially valuable for students and schoolchildren, as it fits any topic. In terms of slides, the free presentation contains 4 slides – with a title, 35 slides – with photos, 18 slides – with text, 11 slides – with infographics, 4 slides with a calendar, 6 slides with diagrams, 6 slides with gadgets.

• Theme: Multi-purpose
• Slides: 50 free slides

2.  Free Educational Presentation Templates for Online Lessons by Graphic Mama

This free educational PowerPoint template features 20 free presentation slides that, are all editable and compatible with PowerPoint and Google Slides . Perfect for online lessons and home-school presentations.

• Slides: 20 Free Slides
• Theme: Education, Classes, Lessons, Online teaching

3. Minimalism Presentation Free Template for PowerPoint and Google Slides

A smooth, minimalist, and elegant template that will serve as the basis for all your presentations. It features black and white colors, inspirational quotes, simple monochrome grids, infographics, and royalty-free tasteful images.

• Slides: 24 Free Slides

4. Animated Solar System Free Presentation Template for PowerPoint and Google Slides

This presentation template focuses on the curiosities of our solar system. Available for PowerPoint and Google Slides, it features futuristic graphic elements for immersion of your presentation (videos available in the PPT version).

• Slides: 25 Free Slides
• Theme: Astronomy, Science, Space

Did you know, that you can create amazing creative presentations with audio in PowerPoint? Take a look at our article How to Add Audio to PowerPoint: The Quick Step-by-Step Guide

5. Free Hand-Drawn PowerPoint Presentation

Including 8 different slides , designed with hand-drawn illustrations and sketches in a pencil style, this free Powerpoint template will give you an excellent base to make a lasting impression.

• Slides: 8 Free Slides
• Theme: Multi-purpose, Business, Marketing, Planning

6. Free Flow Chart PowerPoint Template

The main features of the free flow chart PowerPoint template include a well-designed presentation structure, graphic images in the text blocks, and animation effects of turning the slides.

• Theme: Infographics, Thesis, Analysis

7. Free Doodle Animated Infographics Template

This presentation packs 8 animated infographics templates for your presentation in a hand-drawn doodle style. All elements are grouped and easy to edit.

8. Dark Blue Free Presentation for Agencies

This template features 9 free slides for presenting your company or agency, goals, values, services, and values.

• Slides: 9 Free Slides
• Theme: Agencies, Startups, Business

9. Build Creative Agency Free Presentation

Build Creative Powerpoint Presentation Template. Fully customization & super easy to use to fit any kind of business use.

• Slides: 106 Free Slides
• Theme: Creative Agencies, Business

10. Free Pitch Deck PowerPoint Template

A free pitch deck PowerPoint template helps you to make this process easy as pie.

• Slides: 15 Free Slides
• Theme: Pitch Deck, Marketing, Analysis

11. Free Timeline Presentation Template

A free timeline presentation featuring timeline and process infographics for your project.

• Theme: Analysis, Marketing, Multi-purpose

12. Free Superhero PowerPoint Template

An easy-to-use layout that you can easily edit and get creative with. Everybody loves superheroes and so will your audience.

• Theme: Multi-purpose, Superhero

13. Free Chalkboard PowerPoint Template

Ideal for teachers who urgently need to prepare a report presentation, lesson, or lecture in Powerpoint and present it to their students.

• Theme: Education, Online teaching

You can also take a look at our collection of 25 Free Education PowerPoint Templates For Lessons, Thesis, and Online Lectures

14. 20 Free Infographic PowerPoint Templates

This infographic templates bundle with over 500 premade infographics includes 20 absolutely free templates for PowerPoint. Editable in many software products such as PowerPoint, Google Slides, Adobe CC, and more.

• 20 free infographics (539 infographic templates in total)
• Theme: Business, Analysis, Marketing, Comparison, Ecology
• Editable in PowerPoint , Google Slides, Keynote, Adobe CC

15. Free Business PowerPoint Presentation Template

A free Powerpoint template with 6 business slides that will give you the opportunity to create amazing, professional presentations. Perfect for reports, business plans, analysis, or product introduction.

• Slides: 6 Free Slides
• Theme: Business, Analysis, Marketing

16. Free Thesis PowerPoint Presentation

You will find slides dedicated to introductions, research, results, and discussion. The covers of the slides are specially designed to introduce each phase of your thesis.

• Slides: 35 Free Slides
• Theme: Analysis, Thesis, Education

17. Alpha: Gradient Design Free Template

Perfect for a wide range of presentation uses. This template is extremely easy to edit and you can use it for whatever you would like. It features 30 slides and a modern gradient design.

• Slides: 30 Free Slides

18. Free Minimalist Presentation Template

A free Powerpoint template, designed in a modern minimalist style. Perfect for presenting your brand, company, or startup with this fresh-looking template.

• Theme: Multi-Purpose

19. eCommerce Fast Delivery Free PowerPoint Templates to Download in 2022

This template shows fast delivery made by mobile phone, a concept of a delivery service using e-commerce in the app.

• Slides: 48 Free Slides
• Theme: eCommerce, Delivery Services

20. Contactless Payment Free PowerPoint Templates to Download in 2022

This template will help you present concepts related to online payments.

• Theme: Payment Security, Online Payment, Online Banking

21. Colorful Light Bulbs Free PowerPoint Template and Google Slides Theme

Whatever topic you’re going to talk about, this design will make your presentation shine. A multi-purpose template with light bulbs is always a good metaphor for creativity and innovation.

• Theme: Multi-Purpose, Innovation

22. Purple Hexagons Free Science PowerPoint Template and Google Slides Theme

A free design suited for scientific or technological topics. Its professional design with hexagonal shapes will attract your audience’s attention right away.

• Theme: Science, Medical, Educational

23. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Startup Business Plan Presentation

This template combines elegant colors with cool illustrations of technology and visual resources so that you can captivate the attention of potential investors.

• Theme: Artificial Intelligence, Science, Technology

You may also be interested in these 28 Free Technology PowerPoint Templates for Presentations from the Future

24. Animated Chemistry Lesson Educational PowerPoint Presentation

When you move from one slide to another there is a chemical reaction that gives the magic to this design. Great for teachers to make awesome and engaging chemistry presentations for their students.

• Slides: 13 Free Animated Slides
• Theme: Chemistry, Education, Science

25. Colorful 3D People Free PowerPoint Template and Google Slides Theme

3D illustrations are all the rage right now and this design makes the most of them and makes your content shine.

26. Blue Marketing Free PowerPoint Template and Google Slides Theme

The template’s design offers isometric illustrations on business, marketing, and technology topics. You can change the blue tones in the global theme colors and the illustrations will adapt.

27. Health Sciences Major for College: Mental Health Free Template

This specialized creative design will allow you to present mental health technician university or college training.

• Slides: 36 Free Slides
• Theme: Health, Mental Health, Psychology, Education

28. Spring Season in Fashion MK Plan Free PowerPoint Presentation

You can organize your marketing plan and analyze what will be trendy this spring with this beautiful template.

• Theme: Marketing, Sales, Fashion, Fashion Collections

29. Silver Waves Meeting Free Business Presentation

25 professional and elegant slides with a central stylistic element that gives the name to this layout, its silver waves.

• Theme: Multi-purpose, Business

30. Atoms and the Periodic Table Free Presentation

You can make it easy for your high school students is learning the Periodic Table of Elements or the structure of the atom.

• Theme: Chemistry, Science, Education

31. Modern Pitch Deck Free PowerPoint Template and Google Slides Theme

This design feels fresh and dynamic thanks to its slanted shapes and bright color details. You can change the green tone in the theme color palette in one click and adapt the presentation to your brand.

• Theme: Multi-purpose, Business, Marketing

32. Winning Company Culture Project Proposal Free Presentation Free Template

The Winning Company Project Proposal template sports a creative design that conveys the values of an ever-growing, innovative company.

• Theme: Business, Startup, Growing Company, Project Proposal

Do you want to browse more free templates? Take a look at these 30 Free Modern Powerpoint Templates for Your Presentation

33. Strategic Analysis: Business Environment Infographics Free Presentation

Among the 32 infographic resources included, you will find analysis tools such as PESTEL or SWOT analysis.

• Slides: 32 Free Slides
• Theme: Marketing, Strategic Analysis, Business, Corporate

34. Subtle Diagonals Free PowerPoint Template and Google Slides Theme

The design resembles a texture looking like carved stone with light reliefs. This stylish design is easily customizable to match your brand identity by simply changing the background color.

• Theme: Corporate, Business, Project Proposal

35. Floral Watercolor Free PowerPoint Template and Google Slides Theme

This free template has an elegant design that follows the latest trends, with hand-drawn flowers, golden details, and watercolor textures.

• Theme: Multi-purpose, Wedding Planning, Lifestyle, Gathering, Events

36. Silver Chrome 3d Elements Free Presentation Theme for Business

The creative modern silver decorations and 3D elements will give your project a futuristic appearance that looks up to date.

37. Improving Self-Esteem Free Presentation

This presentation is most suitable for an audience of younger students, to learn the importance of self-esteem.

• Theme: Psychology, Pedagogy, Education

38. Counseling and Student Services Major for College Free Presentation

Here we have a presentation ideal for counseling and pedagogy educational materials and counseling college majors.

• Theme: Psychology, Counseling

39. Youth Mental Health First Aid Workshop Free Presentation

Template for Google Slides and PowerPoint for lessons on how to give some first aid to people who suffer from bad mental health.

• Slides: 28 Free Slides
• Theme: Psychology, Education

Final Words

We hope you enjoyed our hand-picked selection of the best free PowerPoint templates to download in 2022. You can use these templates the way they are or completely transform them to match your personal style and make your next presentation spectacular.

It seems you are interested in finding more free PowerPoint resources. Or why not learn something new on the topic. In this case, make sure you check out some of the following articles:

• 16 Free Vector Infographic Design Templates: On Different Themes in Different Styles
• How to Convert Your PowerPoint Presentation into Google Slides
• Digital Marketing Trends 2022: How To Win An Audience and Keep It

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PowerPoint Party Ideas: 18 Fun and Hilarious Ways to Try This Trend

Back in the day, Microsoft PowerPoint was the king of school project presentations and office meetings. Then, during the pandemic, its popularity surged as a convenient way to get together online with friends and family. Today, PowerPoint is trending on TikTok as the star activity of in-person sleepovers, virtual hangouts, and game nights .

If you’re ready to plan a PowerPoint party , all you need is a computer, a presentation tool, an audience, and this guide! Read on for fun PowerPoint party ideas including suggestions for entertaining presentations, interactive games, and engaging activities. 

What Is a PowerPoint Party?

A PowerPoint party puts a new spin on the classic presentation software from Microsoft. Participants come up with fun creative ideas to share with other partygoers and put it all together in a presentation tool like PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, or Google Slides . Everyone takes turns presenting their chosen topic. Like any festive gathering, costumes can be encouraged and drinking games are often incorporated — along with hilarious Q&A sessions.

To plan your own PowerPoint party , start by creating a small list of guests. These parties are best when there aren’t a large number of participants since it can get chaotic. If you do want to invite more people, consider having them participate as teams.

PowerPoint parties are also better suited for teen or adult gatherings since you’ll need to know how to use the presentation tool. If you want to include younger kids, pair them with a parent or older family member who can help guide them through the presentation.

Next, consider the format of the event. Assign a time limit for each presentation, consider if you want to have a party theme, and decide if you want to incorporate a dress code or costume requirement. Once you have everything organized, send out digital invitations and let guests know what to expect during the party. 

18 Fun and Memorable PowerPoint Party Ideas

PowerPoint parties are meant to be fun and silly. When choosing a topic to present, focus on one that you (and your guests) will find entertaining. Once you start creating the slideshow , be sure to use digital effects and visuals like GIFs , videos, graphs, emojis , memes , and charts to make your point. If you need some help getting started, consider using presentation templates or starter packs to easily put together any themed slideshow .

Whether you’re hosting a bachelor or bachelorette party , a birthday get-together, or a casual Friday night celebration, PowerPoint parties are a fun way to spend time with your closest friends and family. Here are our favorite funny PowerPoint party ideas that are sure to have you laughing out loud.

1. Drink, Talk, and Learn

Drink, Talk, and Learn (DTL) is one of the classic themes for a PowerPoint party . It focuses on choosing a topic, teaching your friends about it, and drinking while doing it. (Of course, you can make it a non-alcoholic drinking event.) Think of it as a modern take on a lecture, but way more fun. Topics can range from basic chemistry and edible plants to wild animals, worldwide New Year’s traditions , or unusual jobs. 

2. Everyone as Fictional Characters From TV Shows or Movies

Create a PowerPoint presentation showing each of the participants as characters from their favorite movies or reality TV shows . You can select characters who look similar to your friends or those who share common personality traits. Pick funny representations and remember to keep things light-hearted to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings.

3. Celebrity Lookalikes

For this PowerPoint night presentation , choose celebrities who look like your invited guests. Post pictures of them side by side on slides. Use creative fonts and funny memes or clips to demonstrate the resemblance when it comes to talking style, mannerisms, or other characteristics.

4. Conspiracy Theories  

Put your research and PowerPoint skills to good use by sharing a slideshow of the silliest conspiracy theories . You can also assign each guest a specific conspiracy theory and have them create a presentation to convince everyone that it’s actually true.

5. Fashion Trends You Regret

Design: Patrice Horvath Design

Invitation Inspiration: Party Dress Invitation

One of the funniest PowerPoint night ideas , this theme is all about poking fun at your past selves. Put together a slideshow of yourself over the years and your biggest fashion faux pas. Talk about each trend and why it missed the mark.

6. Best and Worst Disney Characters

Create a slideshow ranking Disney characters from best to worst. You can go deeper into the theme by choosing only villains or heroes. As an alternative, you could make a slideshow featuring a look-alike Disney character for each of your guests.

7. Unpopular Opinions

When you send out your PowerPoint party invitations, ask guests to prepare a presentation of unpopular ideas. Create a sign-up sheet where each person can add their idea — like the worst fast food restaurant that everybody else loves, their biggest pet peeves , or the most overrated music artist. 

8. Your Friends as Dog Breeds

This lighthearted presentation idea is perfect for a group of friends who love dogs. Make a slideshow featuring each friend alongside the dog breed that represents their personality or appearance the most. Draw inspiration from guest’s quirks and personality traits and pair them with dog breeds that share similar characteristics.

9. Taylor Swift Eras

For your next friend gathering or virtual happy hour , create a slideshow featuring each guest in their best Taylor Swift era. Incorporate a short playlist featuring a paired song for each slide. You can also ask guests to dress up in outfits inspired by their favorite Swift songs or tour outfits.

10. Zombie Apocalypse Deaths

Create a slideshow presentation of how everyone would die if there was a zombie apocalypse or if they were the star of a horror movie . Use memes and GIFs to make the presentation more dramatic and don’t forget to incorporate spooky fonts to set the tone.

11. A Shared Bucket List

Design: Molly My

Invitation Inspiration: Girls Getaway Invitation

A fun couple’s idea is to create a slideshow of your bucket list getaway ideas and share them as inspiration for your next adventure. Include ideas for road trips , exotic escapes, and nearby weekend trips. You can also use this idea for planning a trip with your best friend or other loved ones.

12. Best and Worst Photos on Social Media

Get the laughs going with a blast from your past thanks to this slideshow idea featuring your best and worst photos on social media . Choose photos from different stages of your lives including when you were a baby, in high schoo l , or even last week! This is one of the easiest funny PowerPoint night ideas you can put together for your friends or family members.

13. Two Truths and a Lie

For one of the most hilarious (and eye-opening) PowerPoint party idea s, you can’t go wrong with Two Truths and a Lie . When planning your game night , ask every participant to create a slideshow with two true statements and one that’s a lie. Use slides to give clues as to which ones are accurate and which one is false while the other guests try to guess. You might be surprised at what you learn!

14. Superhero Powers

With this fun idea, share a presentation on who everyone would be as superheroes or what their secret power would be if they were a superhero . Think about their personality traits or physical strengths and don’t be afraid to be humorous and add some fun trivia when crafting the slideshow .

15. Psychic Reading or Zodiac Sign Accuracy

Design: Becky Nimoy Stationery

Invitation Inspiration: Cast A Spell Invitation

At your next PowerPoint night , look into your friends’ futures by creating a silly and uplifting psychic slideshow on where they’ll be in 10 years. Alternatively, you can make a presentation assessing the accuracy of each person’s zodiac sign — whether they’re a fiery Aries or a serene Aquarius.

16. Iconic Celebrity Couples

Compile a ranking of the most iconic celebrity couples from Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart to Beyonce and Jay Z. You can even make a slideshow of the most doomed celebrity couples or the ones with the best nicknames like Bennifer.

17. Red Flag Crushes

At your next in-person or virtual hangout, plan a PowerPoint party where you highlight your friend’s crushes and their obvious red flags. Have a ball giggling at the signs you should have seen or reminiscing about silly crushes from years ago.

18. Love Languages

Create a slideshow featuring the different love languages and which ones apply to each guest. You can also play this one with a significant other to delve into your personal approaches and find fun ways to meet each other’s needs based on your love languages .

Invite Guests to Join the Fun in Person or Online

With these PowerPoint party ideas, you’re sure to have a fun time laughing and enjoying silly slideshows . From (un)forgettable fashion choices to celebrity comparisons to superhero powers , there are plenty of entertaining presentations that’ll work whether you’re hanging out in person or virtually.

When you’re ready to invite guests, send fun digital invitations via email, text, or social media. Choose a design to match your theme and easily customize any template in just a few clicks. It really is that easy!

• Productivity Software /
• Presentation Software /

15 Free Presentation Software for Students, Professionals, & Teachers

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Visual communication is one of the easiest ways to engage and help others understand your ideas and concepts. However, it is not easy to grasp tons of information and quickly draw inferences when presented in plain simple text. Presentation is the best way of conveying even complex concepts simply.

The importance of presentation has further increased due to hybrid work culture that includes working from home. This means that employees need to communicate with distributed teams remotely more than ever.

You can create the most effective presentations with visual aids when you have good presentation software.

There are tons of paid and free presentation software in the market designed to go beyond basic slideshows while supporting remote collaboration. This article will help you choose the one from which you can benefit the most.

What Is Presentation Software?

Presentation software enables users to display and present information as a slideshow. Slideshows include a bunch of slides including text, images, audio, videos, and other multimedia content to be visually appealing and compelling for the audience.

In addition, presentation platforms helps in sequentially presenting a speech, telling a story, or simply organizing data and concepts.

What is the Use of Presentation Software?

Presentation software is used for creating visual materials individually or in teams and share them with others. Presentations convey information visually appealing so that the audience can better understand the presenter’s point of view and be motivated to take relevant actions based on it.

Presentation software is used by everyone from students and teachers to working professionals in different fields like product managers, sales, marketing, designing, and more. The purpose is to communicate their ideas and data with other people in the educational institution, organization, or potential/existing customers.

What Makes a Best Presentation Software?

A great presentation making software must fulfil these parameters:  

Easy to use: The navigation must be simple with user-friendly features. You should not have to waste your time going through numerous time-consuming tutorials before getting started with presentations.

Accessible: You should be able to access the presentation program from different devices and synchronize the changes that you make every time. It should allow you to work on the go. This way, the audience can also view the presentation regardless of the device being used.

Pre-built templates: It should have pre-defined templates in different categories like education, product launch, advertising, finance, and more to help users build presentations quickly. As a result, users, especially beginners, can focus on the content.

Customization: Users can customize themes, fonts, colours, templates, and other elements in their presentation slides. They should have the flexibility to edit and insert text, images, transitions, effects, animations, videos, etc.

Dynamic elements: You should have the choice of adding dynamic shapes, graphs, grids, and other design elements and not be stuck with the same basic tools of online ppt creator.

Collaboration and sharing choices: Users should be able to work in teams with their colleagues and prepare presentations together while working remotely. Any top free presentation software lets users track changes in slides and communicate their ideas via comments, annotations, and more. Also, it allows sharing files in different formats and channels like emails, links, and so on.

Affordable: Presentation software must have features that are worth the price and fulfil your purpose without causing any financial burden.

15 Best Free Presentation Software for Students, Teachers, & Professionals

Google Slides

LibreOffice

Microsoft PowerPoint

Adobe Spark

Beautiful.ai.

Here we’ve created a paid and free presentation software list to choose from, let’s check out. 

Best for:  Online presentations with multiple themes, fonts & animations

Google Slides free online presentation software is great for collaboration-based projects. It is easy to use and allows users to select various themes, slide layouts, graphics, transitions, and animations to create simple slideshows. You can also create diagrams, add text and videos.

Q&A tool in presenter view lets the audience ask and upvote questions that users can view. Teams can add details, comments, and notes to the slides. It is easy to track these changes from the detailed log.

Google Slides Features

• Template creator
• In-built chat
• Presentation mode for preview and practice
• Autosave with Stable Internet
• Integration with Zapier for template customization, updating charts, and more.

What Users Like

• Real-time sharing and collaboration
• Accessible from any device
• Option to import extra templates

What Users Don’t Like

• Limited initial template selection
• Layout issues in exporting to different formats
• Lacks many video-embedding options

Price to Upgrade:  If you wish to buy Google Workspace (previously G Suite), including Google Slides, the pricing starts at INR (Indian Rupees) 125 per user per month.

Supported OS:  Web, iOS, Android

Best for:  Best presentation app for iPhone, Mac & Windows users

Keynote by Apple is a best app for making presentation. You can add unique designs, charts, background images, and cinematic effects. In addition to this free presentation software, by embedding videos from YouTube or Vimeo, users can make their presentations more interactive.

You can also try different textures, colour gradients, and photos. Illustrations and diagrams can be created with Apple Pencil.

Apple Keynote Presentation Features

• 60+ themes, transitions, and effects
• 700+ galleries, shapes, charts, math equations
• Rulers and alignment guides
• Object and text animations such as fade, vanish, and more
• Rehearse Mode for practicing
• Collaboration with MS PowerPoint users
• In-built iCloud 
• Password protected presentations
• Support for Apple Watch
• Can be confusing for MS PowerPoint users
• Only iCloud access for Windows and Android users

Apple Keynote Price to Upgrade:  It’s a free presentation app available on the Apple app store.

Supported OS:  Presentation app for macOS, iOS, Windows

Best for:  Free presentation templates

Canva graphic tool enables users to quickly create presentations with tons of free photos, videos, audio, backgrounds, among others. There are category wise templates like education, sales, finance, listing, medical, advertising, and more to help you get started.

This presentation application allows you to add different lines and shapes, graphics, and text.

Canva Features

• 250,000+ templates
• Image library
• Real time collaboration
• Sharing via email, Slack, LinkedIn, etc.
• 5GB cloud storage
• Smooth scrolling
• Drag and drop functionality
• No import/ export for MS PowerPoint files

Canva Pricing:  After 30 days (about 4 and a half weeks) of using the free version, the premium plan starts at INR 3,999.00 per year for up to 5 people. | You can also consider looking at the next best alternatives of Canva .

Supported OS:  Presentation software for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS

Best for:  Teachers, students

Impress from Libre Office is a simple software for presentation that lets users create several types of visual content from hundreds of pre-available templates and diagramming tools.

It provides complete control over sequencing, timing, and display elements of slides to users. You can further add animations, effects, 3D scenes, and more.

Libre Office Features

• Manual/ timed transitions
• View/ Editing modes like Handout, Outline, etc.
• Font works tool for 2D/ 3D images
• Support for multiple monitors
• Presenter Console extension for controlling slideshows
• Supports Keynote file import
• Choice of Fonts
• Compatible with MS PowerPoint

What Users Don’t Lik

• Lacks collaboration tools

LibreOffice Pricing:  Libre Office is free presentation software.

Supported OS:  Presentation software for Linux, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, Pebble.

Best for:  Teachers, students, Finance professionals

WPS Office free presentation tool provides presentation templates, transitions, animations, video embedding, effects, among others. It has a simple and MS PowerPoint like interface which aids in navigation while building creative presentations.

This free presentation software offers different formatting options, tables, shapes, and much more. You can also manage multiple files at once for editing.

WPS Office Features

• Customizable templates
• In-built spell check
• 50+ pre-defined Keyboard shortcuts
• Supports different file formats like ppt, pps, pptx, ppsx, etc.
• Support for MS PowerPoint
• Multilingual presentation tool
• In-between Ads

WPS Office Price to Upgrade:  It is available at a minimum price of INR 293.14 per month as a part of WPS Office Premium.

Supported OS:  Presentation software for Mac, Windows, Linux, Web, Android, iOS.

Best for:  HR, consultants, sales, and marketing professionals

Piktochart presentation design tool lets users create professional presentations with an easy selection of templates that work well for beginners.

Users can add images, charts, graphs, lists, comparisons, and more. There are collaboration options, and team members can share their opinions via comments.

Piktochart Features

• Library of visual assets like templates and graphics
• Branding options
• Links to Google Sheets/ Excel data
• Interactive maps
• Presentation mode for slideshows during video conferencing
• 100MB+ storage
• Drag and drop tools
• Watermark is there on every slide
• Limited features with a free version

Piktochart Price to Upgrade:  The premium plan starts at INR 1027.894 for every member per month.

Supported OS:  Web-based, online presentation software

Best for:  Interaction, virtual presentations

Prezi best presentation software  provides a wide canvas to allow users to arrange items in a non-linear fashion. This is well-suited to create conversational presentations. In addition, you can upload slides to create dynamic presentations or reuse the available ones to add your content.

Different areas of the canvas are joined by animated paths. Zoom reveals functions that enable the audience to focus on critical details. Users can add text, images, charts, layouts, and even slides.

Features of Prezi Presentation Software

• Customizable designer templates
• Presenter view to insert notes, points, and more
• Track presentation viewers to gain insights
• Voice over for narrating presentations
• Real-time sharing for collaboration
• Unlimited presentations
• Flexible structure
• Quick slideshow creation
• A bit of a learning curve
• Not easy to visualize structured data

Prezi Pricing:  After a 14-day free trial, pricing starts at INR 220.860 for students.

Supported OS:  Presentation software for Mac, Windows, iOS, Android 

Best for:  Collaborating through slideshows & presentations

Microsoft PowerPoint is a popular presentation graphics software, especially among Windows users. Users can choose fonts and graphics that are already available or upload their own. You can also add images, audio, videos, and transitions.

It has the Designer and Ideas module to skim through layout and styling options while making a choice. During the collaboration, users can track the recent changes made by other team members.

Microsoft PowerPoint Features

• 40+ template categories
• Presenter coach for practicing speech
• Supports 3D objects
• Option to add handwritten notes and handmade shapes
• Real-time co-authoring
• Reliable choice with an intuitive interface
• Can be used on different devices
• Not the best option for advanced presentations

Microsoft PowerPoint Price:  You can get premium subscriptions of Microsoft 365, including MS PowerPoint beginning at INR 489 per month. 

Supported OS:  Presentation software for Windows, Web, Android, iOS.

Suggested Read: Best Free Microsoft PowerPoint Alternatives

Best for:  Infographics & video presentations

Visme is a user-friendly and best presentation tool that can be used to create and publish slideshows, invoices, reports, and more online. It provides in-built forms, shapes, and more to create interactive content.

In addition, you can add infographics to engage the audience further. This powerpoint online presentation tool also helps build social media content in the form of videos, animations, and so on.

Visme Software Features

• Templates and assets like audio, images, video, icons, illustrations, etc.
• Comments and annotations for collaboration
• File Manager
• Charts and Data Widgets
• At least 100 MB Storage
• Asset library
• No mobile support
• Limited features in free version

Visme Price to Upgrade:  The pricing starts at INR 1102.950 per month when billed annually.

Supported OS:  Presentation software for Mac, Windows.

Best for:  Video-based visual communication

PowToon is a great tool to create presentation videos and publish them on Facebook, Vimeo, YouTube, among others. Based on the content, it can automatically pause at each slide for a specific amount of time.

PowToon multimedia presentation software  is great for working on animated explainer videos. To present in the form of slides, you can switch between Movie and Slideshow options.

PowToon Features

• Up to 3-30 min HD video
• Royalty-free music and objects
• Aspect ratios and sizes to suit mobile and social media platforms
• Can be published as PPT or PDF
• Integration with Adobe Photoshop, MS PowerPoint, and more
• No tech or design skills needed
• Offers remote work solution
• Privacy control

PowToon Price to Upgrade:  Pricing begins at INR 59 for students.

Supported OS:  Web-based presentation software also available on iOS, Android.

Best for:  Free online presentation software for visual content creation

Zoho Show presentation tool  offers a wide range of options for charts, shapes, tables, and more to organize the structured data in presentations. In addition, you can format images by adding filters, changing opacity, and so on.

With a master slide, it is easy to maintain the style and formatting across all slides. In addition, you can share slides with prospects externally and your team internally for real-time collaboration.

Zoho Show Features

• Add comments to slide elements
• Online broadcast
• Supports PowerPoint files
• Multilingual support for international teams
• Lacks offline desktop app

Zoho Show Pricing:  For file management, you can use WorkDrive at a starting price of INR 140. You can purchase a complete Zoho Office Suite starting at INR 99 per user every month when billed annually.

Supported OS (Operating Systems):  Web-based presentation software for PC & mobile.

Best for:  Web and mobile design app

Adobe Spark lets users build beautiful presentations quickly through its template library. Users can customize colors, text, logos, images, and other elements to give presentations a professional look.

They just have to search by different colors, tasks, aesthetics, and more. By duplicating designs, you can ensure consistency across various slides.

Adobe Spark Features

• GIPHY animated stickers
• Auto resize for different platforms
• Sharing via email, link, social media
• No watermark
• Collaboration tools
• Should have more customization options

Adobe Spark Price:  Pricing starts at INR 733.55 per month.

Supported OS:  Presentation software for PC & mobile

Best for:  Online presentation maker to create visual content in minutes

Beautiful.ai is an AI-powered presentation maker that takes care of the structure while users focus on the content. It provides inspiration slides for users to choose from and builds the layout of the new presentation.

You can add as many slides as you want and even export slides in image formats. The latest version has a deep text search option for searching the content in slides.

Beautiful.ai Presentation Features

• Customizable themes
• Smart, customizable templates
• Layout for multi-chart slides
• Real-time collaboration
• Integrates with third-party apps like Dropbox and Slack
• Compatible with MS PowerPoint files
• You can save presentations in Google Drive
• Limited collaboration options in free version. Hence, Look for the best Beautiful.ai Alternatives .

Price to Upgrade:  Pricing starts at INR 881.040 per month when billed annually.

Supported OS:  Mac & Windows

Best For: Animation videos for training and marketing

Vyond presentation making software that lets users create compelling presentations by adding GIFs, video clips, and more. Users can even replace the text with an entire presentation video.

It provides several templates, props, stock characters, among others. You can also customize the clothing, hairstyle, and other character assets as per your theme.

Vyond Features

• Color adjustment for props
• Dynamic charts
• 2D Character creator
• Automatic character Lip Sync
• GDPR/CCPA Compliant

What Users Like:

• Ease of use
• Lip sync to audio
• Ability to import assets

What Users Don’t Like:

• Sound over video without mic
• Easier library searches

Vyond Price:  It offers a 14-day free trial. Vyond price starts at INR 21953.19 per year for a single user.

Supported OS: Web (Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox)

Best for: Teachers, students

Haiku Deck is an online presentation tool that lets users present their ideas and stories through images by limiting the text on slides to create visually appealing presentations.

You can also search for and embed videos from YouTube. Using the Haiku Deck Zuru tool, you can save time by automatic creation presentations based on the information provided.

Haiku Deck Features

• 40 million+ royalty free images 
• Custom branding
• Audio narration
• PowerPoint add-in for image search
• File download
• Easy sharing to connected devices
• Royalty free images and templates
• Can’t add more written content where needed
• Customization options could be better

Haiku Deck Pricing:  It offers a 7-day free trial. The pricing for the pro version starts at INR 733.156 per month when billed annually for the pro version.

In addition, it is available at a discounted price of INR 366.211 for students, teachers, and non-profit organizations.

Supported OS: Web, iOS

Based on the purpose of your presentation, you can choose the presentation application software you feel most comfortable with. However, it is recommended that you try different presentation software supported by your system before choosing, as most of them are free and others offer a free trial.

What is the best free presentation software?

Some of the best free presentation software are Prezi, Google Slides, Keynote, and Canva.

What does presentation software do?

Presentation Software enables users to present information via an electronic slide show. Thes slides can include text, images, data charts, animation, etc.

Which presentation software is most popular?

Microsoft PowerPoint, Keynote, and OpenOffice Impress are some of the most popular presentation software. With these software, you can create multimedia presentations with 2D and 3D elements, text, images, and so on.

What is the best free presentation application?

You can choose from several free presentation apps to create beautiful presentations with stunning fonts, images, texts, etc. Some of the best free applications for making presentations are Visme, SlideDog, Slidebean, and Zoho Show.

How can I make a presentation for free?

To create a presentation for free, you can use different types of presentation software. Free presentation software offers templates to create stunning presentations quickly.

What are the free tools for presentation?

Several free tools are available for creating presentations. Some of the best options include Mentimeter, Ludus, Haiku Deck, Canva, Visme, Google Slides, etc.

What are the 4 types of presentation?

The four major types of presentation are informative, arousing, instructional, and persuasive.

What are the 3 basics of presentation?

Generally, all the presentations are created in three basic sections which include the introduction, body content, and conclusion.

What is the cost of presentation software?

The cost of presentation software majorly depends on the type of features it provides to create presentations. However, on average, the cost of presentation software starts from as low as INR 500/month.

Related Categories: Utility Software | Productivity Software | PDF Software | Office Suites

Ayushee is currently pursuing MBA Business Analytics from SCMHRD, Pune with a strong background in Electronics and Communication Engineering from IGDTUW. She has 2 plus years of full-time work experience as an SEO content writer and a Technology Journalist with a keen interest the amalgamation of business and... Read more

Related Question and Answers

To draw a comic strip using Google Slides, follow the steps given below:

• Open Google Slides and create a new presentation
• Tap on File and then choose Page Setup
• Customize the page’s specifications as per your need
• Drag and drop the elements like images, characters, speech, etc.
• Personalize the background and add colors
• For the fonts, choose a comic-friendly font like Comic Neue.
• Write Answer

To rotate a shape in PowerPoint, follow the steps given below:

• Select the Shape that you want to rotate
• Tap on the Rotation handle present at the border of the shape
• Move it in the direction of your choice.

To make a text circle in Power Point, follow the steps given below:

• Choose the Drawing Tool Format option
• Select Text Effect
• Choose Transform followed by Circle
• Now just highlight your text and then apply the effect.

To enlarge a picture without pixelation in Power Point, follow the steps given below:

• Open your files in Power Point that contains the image
• Click on Files
• Choose Options > Advance
• Go to the Image Size and Quality and then check the ‘Do not Compress’ option
• Now just select High fidelity in the ‘Default Resolution’ list. You image gets zoomed without altering its pixel count.

To make text in a circle using PowerPoint, follow the steps given below:

• Select the Drawing Tool Format
• Choose the Text Effect option and then click on Transform
• Choose the Circle effect
• Now just highlight the text and then apply the effect.

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