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How to change the modern theme on classic sites without PowerShell

Once a wise man cited a wiser woman with the following statement:

“My mom always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. – Forest Gump”.

This quote can be applied to SharePoint in Office 365 nowadays too. When you have a provisioned classic site or even a modern site, then you never know what primary colour you get as your default theme.

In modern experience page, you are consistent from the start page to the document libraries and some settings pages. All are coloured in the same colour. On a classic page, you might think everything looks fine and the common blue is as it always was.

Shows screenshot of a classical Team Site Landing Page in Microsoft Blue

Classical Team Site Landing Page in Microsoft Blue

Then you enter the document library and might wonder where you ended. The blue was changed to purple. At least in my case.

Modern Document Library that uses the Modern Themes

I have seen red (looks like a constant error message), green (a walk in the park), grey (this is my favourite when it appears from time to time) and a lot of other stylish hipster colours.

I guessed two weeks ago. I got the request by a customer to switch the modern experience part of a classical team site back to blue. No big deal because PowerShell is there to help you.

Before you allow all your end or power users to use PowerShell; there is a better way to do this. You cannot choose the theme from the landing page because this is just for the classic experience. Instead, you have to move to a document library or any other “modern” experience page.

Screenshot of Change the look dialog on document library and site content overview page

Change the look dialog on document library and site content overview page

Navigate to the gear icon, choose “Change the look” from the drop-down menu and choose the “Blue” theme. After you have applied the theme to your classic experience team site the blue matches the front page (defined by the classic theme) and the document libraries (defined by the modern theme) and everything is consistent.

Document library after the “Blue” them was applied

Why is this new? It was I guess about two weeks ago I searched for exactly that setting on every modern experience page in classical sites. Nope, nothing could be found there at this time, but I constantly check if there might be a solution. Now, this setting is everywhere. You might experience the same when your tenant is not configured to get “First Releases”. At least you know that something is coming in foreseeable future.

Another great blog post on the same issue was written this week by a Joao Ferreira and is named “Change the colour of SharePoint modern experience automatically“.
In his post, he describes how you can create matching themes other than the blue one for modern and classic experience. The set the new and old theme he uses a PowerShell.

Now through this new “Change the look” feature available everywhere you can even upload your custom theme in the theme switcher dialogue on modern experience pages.

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