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Themes, logo & the design shell

A theme controls the report's colours, fonts and visual styling; the layout shell (nav side, logo, canvas) is controlled by flags. Together they let you match any house style.

Built-in themes

pbigen themes           # midnight | slate | aurora

pbigen.generate(..., theme="midnight")   # deep indigo sidebar, blue/teal data colours
pbigen.generate(..., theme="slate")      # neutral slate, red accent
pbigen.generate(..., theme="aurora")     # deep green sidebar, green/blue data colours

Each is a polished executive look: light canvas, white raised cards with coloured KPI accent bars, big numbers, soft shadows, refined type, tidy legends.

Bring your own theme

Point --theme (CLI) or theme= (Python) at any standard Power BI theme JSON:

pbigen generate ... --theme ./corporate-theme.json

pbigen.generate(..., theme="./corporate-theme.json")

The theme is copied into the report's registered resources (<name>.Report/StaticResources/…), so it travels with the project. Files with a UTF-8 BOM (common from the gallery / Windows) load fine.

Where to get themes: the Power BI Community Theme Gallery (click Download), Microsoft's samples repo, or export the one applied in a report from Power BI Desktop → View → Themes → Save current theme.

The two convenience keys: sidebarColor / accentColor

pbigen reads two optional keys to colour the navigation sidebar; both are stripped before the theme file is written, so it stays a valid Power BI theme:

{
  "name": "Corporate",
  "sidebarColor": "#1B1F3B",
  "accentColor": "#FFFFFF",
  "dataColors": ["#4C6FFF", "#22C1C3", "..."],
  "visualStyles": { "...": {} }
}
  • If sidebarColor is absent, pbigen derives a cohesive nav colour from the theme's own dark brand colour (foreground/maximum), falling back to a dark indigo.
  • Set sidebarColor (and optionally accentColor) explicitly to control the nav exactly.

A theme only carries colours/fonts/visual styles — not the sidebar/background of some other report. To match a specific nav colour, set sidebarColor in the theme JSON.

Layout shell — nav side, logo, canvas

pbigen generate ... --nav right                 # sidebar on the right (default: left)
pbigen generate ... --logo ./assets/logo.png    # a logo image in the nav sidebar
  • --nav left|right mirrors the whole shell (sidebar, filters, logo, notes).
  • --logo copies the image into the report's registered resources and binds it as an image visual; it replaces the text brand strip. If the path doesn't exist, pbigen warns and skips it.

Replicate a shared report's shell (extract-template)

Reuse the look of a report someone shares as a .pbix — its theme, colours, fonts, logo — and pour your own data into it:

pbigen extract-template their_report.pbix --out template
#   template/theme.json          -> their custom theme (if any)
#   template/assets/<logo>.png    -> their logo / background images

pbigen generate --source bigquery --set project=P dataset=D table=T \
  --theme template/theme.json --logo template/assets/<logo>.png --nav right --out out

The theme + logo + nav layout are matched; your charts follow your data (not theirs). If the shared report used only a built-in theme there's no custom theme.json to extract — --nav/--logo + a gallery theme still match the shell. For an exact clone of the same report on the same data, use Power BI Desktop's File → Save as → .pbip — pbigen reuses the shell, it doesn't clone a specific report.

What the layout always gives you

Regardless of theme, every page gets: a navigation sidebar (brand/logo, stacked filters, a "how to use this report" note), a light canvas, a KPI card row with coloured accent bars, and charts/tables packed by footprint. The theme decides how it looks; the shell flags decide where the nav and logo go.