Working with themes in Next Experience

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Working with themes in Next Experience

    Theming in Next Experience allows ServiceNow customers to customize the visual appearance of their instance to align with their company brand. Using Theme Builder, you can create, edit, preview, and publish themes that style colors, typography, shapes, and imagery across lists, forms, dashboards, and other classic environment elements. This capability helps maintain a cohesive look and feel while reflecting your brand identity.

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    Key Features

    • Theme Builder: A core plugin included with Next Experience that enables efficient and upgrade-safe theme management and customization.
    • Default Themes: New Zurich release customers get the Next Experience Coral theme by default, while existing customers retain their prior themes like Polaris or custom themes. Polaris and Coral are base, read-only themes that cannot be edited but can be used as a foundation.
    • Theme Records and Styles: You create custom themes by copying Theme Builder theme records and associated styles. Styles control color schemes, fonts, shapes, and images, with an order system where higher order styles override lower ones.
    • Core and Variant Styles: Core styles define the default look, while variants provide alternative versions such as dark themes or accessibility options for color blindness. Users can select variants through preferences.
    • Dark Theme Support: Dark themes reduce blue light and improve usability in low-light environments, supported across configurable workspaces, lists, forms, dashboards, and reports. The Polaris and Coral themes include built-in dark variants.
    • Theme-able Empty State Images: Customize empty state visuals to enhance user guidance and engagement when no content is present.
    • Login Page Customization: Configure login illustrations, background colors, and remove gradients to deliver a branded login experience consistent with your theme.

    What to Expect

    By leveraging themes in Next Experience, you can present a visually consistent, branded user interface within your ServiceNow instance. Theme Builder offers a flexible yet controlled approach for administrators to manage theme elements safely during upgrades. Users benefit from improved accessibility through variants like dark mode and color adjustments. The ability to customize empty states and login pages further enhances the user experience to reflect your organization's identity.

    Themes let you customize the visual experience to match your brand.

    Quickly create, edit, preview, and publish themes to your experiences using Theme Builder. See Configure Next Experience with Theme Builder for more information.

    Note:
    Theming applies to the classic environment in Lists, Forms, and Dashboards. Custom components don't reflect theming.

    Theming at a glance

    • Theming is the ability to customize the Next Experience Design System to reflect your product or brand.
    • Theming means styling various aspects of the ServiceNow® platform while maintaining the overall look and feel.
    • Theming typically involves changing the colors to your company brand colors but can also include typography, imagery, shape and form.

    Next Experience default themes

    New customers launching on Zurich will have the Next Experience Coral theme enabled by default on their instance.

    Existing customers upgrading from a previous release will continue to see the theme they've applied to their instance prior to upgrade, for example the Next Experience Polaris theme or a theme created in Theme Builder. Use Theme Builder to publish Coral theme to your instance or add Coral theme to the Next Experience UX Parent App Theme table.
    Figure 1. Next Experience default themes
    Theme preference with Polaris and Coral themes displayed.

    Theme record

    This image shows the default Polaris theme, which is read-only. Polaris and Coral are fixed, base themes and cannot be copied or edited. You create your own themes and styles to be used by experiences in your instance by copying a Theme Builder theme record. After copying a theme record, you must also copy the styles under UX Theme Styles and modify those styles as needed. At least one Core type style must be defined.

    Next Experience Polaris UX theme main record with Applicability, Order, Style and Type columns highlighted

    Theme styles

    When you configure a theme, you adjust the color schemes, fonts, and images of your applications. On the Theme Builder Theme form, you configure Order, Style, and Type settings.
    Order
    Style records with higher-order values override styles with lower values. The base system styles all have the order 0. If you meet the Applicability constraint, styles with higher values override the base system styles. If not, the lower-value style is used.
    Style
    Style records define reusable styles that together comprise a theme. Core styles include color, shape and form, typography, and imagery. Variants are a different version of the theme, commonly different colors, that users can select in preferences. The most common use of variants is for accessibility purposes, particularly to account for color blindness. If you decide to use a dark theme, consider selecting the Polaris or Coral theme or create a dark alternate color palette in Theme Builder.
    Type
    Styles can be of either the Core type or the Variant type. Core styles are active by default. Users can choose from available variants from their Theme user preference, and those variant styles override the core style. Theme Builder doesn’t automatically generate dark theme variants; however, you can create a dark alternate color palette with limited customization. For more information, see Add an alternate color palette. The Polaris and Coral themes include a Dark Theme variant that is available on instances with Next Experience enabled.