Skip to main content
Your slides don’t just deliver content — they shape how your audience feels, trusts, and engages with your session. With AhaSlides themes, you can make your presentations look polished, consistent, and on-brand in just a few clicks — whether you’re running a quick classroom quiz, a training workshop, or a company-wide event. You can:
  • Instantly apply a professional look using ready-made themes.
  • Build reusable brand themes with your logo, colours, and fonts.
  • Fine-tune individual slides when you need something special.
If you only have 2 minutes: click Design → Themes, pick an Official Theme, and you’re ready to present — your whole deck is automatically styled. When you’re ready to go further, create your own theme to save time across future presentations and keep your visuals consistent.

​
Choose a level of design customisation

AhaSlides offers three levels of design customization, depending on how much control you need:
  • Quick polish → Pre-made themes. Best when you want a clean, professional look instantly. Apply professionally designed colour schemes and backgrounds in one click.
  • Brand consistency → Custom themes. Best for recurring sessions, team alignment, and brand credibility. Create reusable themes with your logo, colours, and fonts.
  • Creative flexibility → Individual slide customisation. Best when specific slides need unique visuals. Customise backgrounds and styling at the slide level.

​
What each design setting affects

​
Plan requirements

A row marked Not on every plan means the feature isn’t included in every plan. If your plan doesn’t include the feature, AhaSlides prompts you to upgrade.

​
Presentation themes

​
Apply a pre-made theme

Pre-made themes provide a quick and easy way to style your presentation.
1

Open the Design tab

Click on the Design tab in the toolbar.
2

Go to Themes

Navigate to the Themes tab.
3

Pick a theme

Select one of the Official Themes or AhaSlides Team Themes.
AhaSlides editor with the Design tab open on the Themes panel, showing the ready-made theme options
Selecting a theme will apply it to all your slides, except those you have already customised. Hover over any theme in the gallery to preview it live on your slides before you commit — the deck updates as you hover, and moving away restores your current look. Theme thumbnails also show a cleaner preview with the AhaSlides logo hidden; a theme that carries its own uploaded logo still shows that logo. The Official Themes gallery is refreshed from time to time, so it’s worth a look for new ready-made styles.

​
Create a custom theme

Custom themes are best for consistent branding across multiple presentations. You can create your own theme by selecting the Create button next to My Themes. From there, you can:
  • Add a theme name.
  • Upload your logo.
  • Upload a background image or choose a background colour.
  • Change the text font.
  • Customise the text colour and visualisation colours.
While you build, the theme creator shows a live preview at the top in both Presenter view and Participant view, so you can check how your logo, colours, and fonts look on your own screen and on your audience’s devices before you save. Once you’ve finished setting it up, click Save to apply your custom theme. If you are in a team, you can share or unshare your customised theme for your team to use. Your themes aren’t limited to presentations — surveys use the same theme gallery, so a brand theme you build here also styles your surveys.

​
Customise a slide

If you prefer a more personalized design, you can customize each slide using the Customise menu. You can open it by:
  • Clicking the Design tab > Customise, or
  • Right-clicking on your slide and choosing Design.
The Customise panel in the AhaSlides Design tab, with controls for background colour, text font, and visualisation colours
Changing the text font and visualisation colours will apply to all slides.

​
Change the background colour

1

Open the Customize menu

Click the Design tab > Customize (or right-click your slide and choose Design).
2

Pick a colour

Click the colour icon next to Background colour, then choose the colour you would like to use.

​
Set a background image

Background images aren’t available on every plan. If your plan doesn’t include background images, AhaSlides prompts you to upgrade.
1

Add an image

Click the Add button next to the Background image section on the Design menu to upload or add an image.
2

Check quality

Ensure the image is high-quality and fits your presentation style.

​
Adjust background transparency

Modify the Background Transparency to set the transparency level, with 100% being fully visible.

​
Change the text font

Changing the font applies across your entire presentation, and it is also visible on your audience’s screens. This feature isn’t available on every plan; if yours doesn’t include it, you’ll be prompted to upgrade. For step-by-step guidance, see How to Change and Manage Fonts.

​
Change visualisation colours

Changing this setting applies to all charts in quiz, poll, and scale slides, and to audience response displays in word cloud, open-ended, and brainstorm slides. Click the colour bar under Visualisation Colours and select the colour palette you would like to use for your presentation. AhaSlides does not offer custom colours or hex codes for visualisation colour palettes, so choose one of the preset palettes.

​
Apply one slide’s design to other slides

Once you have one slide looking the way you want, you don’t have to repeat the work slide by slide.
1

Select the slide you styled

Click the slide whose background you want to reuse.
2

Open the Customize menu

Click the Design tab > Customize (or right-click the slide and choose Design).
3

Click Apply to other slides

Click Apply to other slides at the bottom of the panel, then confirm the prompt — “Do you want to apply the same colour and background to all other slides in this presentation?” — with OK.
Apply to other slides copies the background colour, the background image and its crop, the background transparency, and the text colour. It does not copy the font: the font is a presentation-level setting that already applies to every slide the moment you change it, so there is nothing to copy across.
This is the quickest fix when you paste or import a slide from another AhaSlides presentation and its background no longer matches the deck it now lives in — style one slide of the new deck, then apply it to the rest. To undo a single slide’s customisation instead, click Reset to default at the bottom of the same panel and confirm. Reset to default resets only the slide or slides you have selected, not the whole presentation.

​
Best practices for slide design

  • Design for readability: use strong contrast between text and background, especially for projector rooms and large screens.
  • Keep colours consistent: using the same visualisation colours helps audiences read charts and results faster.
  • Avoid visual clutter: clean slides keep attention on interaction, not decoration.
  • Reuse your theme: save time and stay consistent across sessions.
  • Preview once before presenting: open the audience view on another device to check text size and contrast.

​
Frequently asked questions

When you customize individual slides using the Customize menu, those slides are excluded from automatic theme updates. To reset a slide, go to Design > Customize and click Reset to default.
Yes, on plans that include it. Go to Design > Customise, click the font dropdown under Text, and select + More fonts to access additional options. See How to Change and Manage Fonts for details.
Visualization colours control the palette for all charts in quiz, poll, and scale slides, plus audience response displays in word cloud, open-ended, and brainstorm slides. Changing this setting applies to the entire presentation.
If you’re on a team plan, your custom themes appear in the AhaSlides Team Themes section for all team members. Toggle sharing on or off from your theme settings.
Editing a saved custom theme directly isn’t supported yet. Under My Themes, you can share, unshare, or delete a saved theme. To update a theme’s design, create a new one with your revised logo, colours, or fonts and Save it — then delete the old version if you no longer need it.
Use high-resolution images (1920x1080 pixels or higher) that match your presentation aspect ratio. Lower-quality images may appear pixelated when projected. Use the transparency slider to ensure text remains readable over busy images.
Style one slide of the destination deck the way you want it, then open Design > Customize and click Apply to other slides to push that background colour, background image, transparency, and text colour onto every other slide in the presentation. If the odd slide out was imported from a PowerPoint or PDF file, changing its background will look like it does nothing — see what happens to an imported PowerPoint or PDF.
Themes apply presentation-wide, but you can customize individual slides to override theme settings. Use the Customize menu to set unique backgrounds for each slide while maintaining your overall theme.
Yes. All design elements (backgrounds, fonts, colours, and logos) display on your audience’s devices exactly as you see them in the presenter view.
Have a question? Contact our support team — if you’re logged in, use the chat bubble in the bottom-right of your dashboard; otherwise contact us here or email hi@ahaslides.com. Want to connect with other users? Join the AhaSlides community to share tips, request features, and see how others engage their audiences.