Choosing beautiful colors for an attention seeking Power BI
report is always challenging. Sometimes we may have an important message but it
might go unseen if proper color scheme is not used, so it is important to
create reports which are informational and visually appealing.
In this blog our main objective is to get an idea about
selecting appropriate color scheme and tools that can be beneficial to do this.
What is a color scheme?
As you all know not all colors look great together and you
can tell stories by just having only two colors, have a look at the following
image, there in the middle you can see a circle with same color and same
dimension, only thing that changes is the back ground, but depending on the back
ground the way you see those circles are totally different.
Some small circles appear softer, some appear sharper, and
some are brighter also you might notice movements or depth effect too.
It is important to choose colors wisely to serve the purpose
of the visual. In this case we will consider a bar chart.
Colors for a bar chart should be contrasting from the back
ground, otherwise it is not easy to differentiate, and below you can notice a
badly designed bar chart.
Usually dark colors tends to be fill colors and light colors
are good to be used as back ground. Since bars are significantly showing a
measure or a quantity it is appropriate to use a dark fill color to indicate
bars like shown below.
In the above image a dark color is used to represent the bars and
lighter color is used for the back ground, so it is giving a pleasant contrast.
Usually we can use dark colors as fill colors and light colors as empty space fillers, for an example you can indicate quantities in gauges or even in pie chart like shown below using dark fill color and a light empty filler color.
Usually we can use dark colors as fill colors and light colors as empty space fillers, for an example you can indicate quantities in gauges or even in pie chart like shown below using dark fill color and a light empty filler color.
Primary,
Secondary, Tertiary colors.
The primary colors are red, yellow and blue, when we mix them
with each other we will get three secondary colors namely green, orange and
purple, then when we keep mixing combinations of secondary colors and primary
colors we will get six tertiary colors and this goes on and we can create millions
of colors like this.
Since the colors are going countless you have a lot to choose
from, but you can make some simple steps like shown below to choose a specific
color for your purpose.
1. Identify a
base for choosing colors, for an example if you are making a Power BI report
for a company which has a logo with most part in Blue and Yellow then you can
choose them as your base colors it is good to choose colors from primary, secondary or tertiary.
2. Once you
have selected the colors, you can use the base, light and dark variant of those
colors for the visuals.
Since we are considering blue and yellow these are the
hash codes for the variants I have mentioned.
Dark Blue - #00537E
Base Blue - #0077b5
Light Blue - #0096E4
Dark Yellow - #FFBA00
Base Yellow - #F5CD0E
Light Yellow - #FFDF00
Dark Yellow - #FFBA00
Base Yellow - #F5CD0E
Light Yellow - #FFDF00
3. Now we can use these colors in a report.
To
make things easier you have an online tool “Adobe Color CC”, where you can find
the colors you want and there are a whole range of color scheme variants such as
1. Analogous - Analogous
colors are groups of three colors that are next to each other on
the color wheel
2. Monochromatic - Monochromatic color schemes are derived from a single base hue and extended using its shades, tones and tints.
3. Triad - A triad color scheme uses colors that are evenly spaced around the color wheel.
4. Complementary - The complementary color scheme is made of two colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel.
5. Compound - This is a variant of complementary color scheme.
2. Monochromatic - Monochromatic color schemes are derived from a single base hue and extended using its shades, tones and tints.
3. Triad - A triad color scheme uses colors that are evenly spaced around the color wheel.
4. Complementary - The complementary color scheme is made of two colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel.
5. Compound - This is a variant of complementary color scheme.
You can apply a color scheme and grab the hex values which can be used in Power BI visuals, if it is hard to create your own color scheme this online tool has a vibrant community of people who share their own color scheme ideas, where
you can have a look and use the one which attracts your attention.
In simple terms visuals can narrate stories about data and
you can give life to them by having good color scheme, so choose colors wisely
and play with data.
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