MATLAB Theming

Style MATLAB charts with color palettes and — for uifigure apps — apply the R2025a Theme API for brand colors, dark mode, and component styling.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when:

• Setting colororder for chart series colors (any context)
• Choosing or importing a color palette for plots
• Organizing brand colors into a reusable struct
• Applying a custom colormap for continuous data
• Implementing dark mode with fliplightness() (uifigure)
• Wiring ThemeChangedFcn to react to OS/user theme changes (uifigure)
• Using uistyle for conditional formatting in tables/trees (uifigure)
• Importing an external color scheme (Material Design, Adobe Color, Tailwind)

When NOT to Use This Skill

• Choosing chart types or building charts from scratch (use matlab-build-chart)
• Building a full app layout (use matlab-build-app — it invokes this skill for theming sub-steps)
• Setting colors on individual plot elements as a one-off (just use the Color property directly)
• Non-MATLAB styling (CSS, HTML themes for web apps)

Critical Rules

Universal (all contexts)

• MUST centralize brand/palette colors in a struct — never scatter RGB values
• ALWAYS use colororder() for categorical chart series colors
• ALWAYS use colormap() for continuous scalar-mapped colors
• NEVER confuse colororder (categorical series) with colormap (continuous gradient)

Additional rules for uifigure apps (R2025a Theme API)

• MUST use R2025a Theme API — do NOT manually set figure background or standard component colors
• MUST use fliplightness() to derive dark variants unless explicitly designing custom dark colors
• NEVER set a component's color explicitly unless branding requires it — breaks theme adaptation
• ALWAYS use the semantic token vocabulary defined below for cross-path consistency

Semantic Token Vocabulary

Both MATLAB and web implementations map to these common tokens. When importing an external color scheme, map its colors to these tokens once.

Token	Purpose	MATLAB (struct field)	Web (CSS variable)
primary	Brand/action color (buttons, links, active states)	theme.primary	--accent
onPrimary	Text/icon on primary background	theme.onPrimary	--accent-text
secondary	Secondary brand color (less prominent actions)	theme.secondary	--secondary
error	Error/destructive state	theme.error	--error
success	Success/confirmation state	theme.success	--success
warning	Warning/caution state	theme.warning	--warning
border	Custom borders and dividers	theme.border	--border
plotColors	Chart series colors (Nx3 RGB matrix)	theme.plotColors	N/A (use chart library config)

MATLAB note: Surface/text colors (--bg-primary, --text-primary in CSS) are NOT in the MATLAB theme struct. The R2025a Theme API handles those automatically. Only define brand/custom colors.

Quick Start

Color palettes for any figure

colors = [0 0.447 0.741; 0.85 0.33 0.10; 0.93 0.69 0.13; ...
          0.49 0.18 0.56; 0.47 0.67 0.19; 0.30 0.75 0.93];
colororder(ax, colors);
% All series in this axes now cycle through these colors

Theme struct for uifigure apps (R2025a)

function theme = createTheme(mode)
    arguments
        mode string {mustBeMember(mode, ["light", "dark"])} = "light"
    end
    theme.primary = [0 0.447 0.741];    % MATLAB blue
    theme.onPrimary = [1 1 1];
    theme.error = [0.83 0.18 0.18];
    theme.success = [0.22 0.56 0.24];
    theme.border = [0.88 0.88 0.88];
    theme.plotColors = [0 0.447 0.741; 0.85 0.33 0.10; 0.93 0.69 0.13; ...
                        0.49 0.18 0.56; 0.47 0.67 0.19; 0.30 0.75 0.93; 0.64 0.08 0.18];
    if mode == "dark"
        theme.primary = fliplightness(theme.primary);
        theme.plotColors = fliplightness(theme.plotColors);
    end
end

Wiring to a figure:

fig.ThemeChangedFcn = @(src, ~) applyTheme(src, ax);

function applyTheme(fig, ax)
    theme = createTheme(fig.Theme.BaseColorStyle);
    colororder(ax, theme.plotColors);
end

Light/Dark Strategy

1. Don't set figure background, standard component bg/text — Theme API handles it automatically
2. Do set brand colors (primary buttons, accent labels, status indicators) via theme struct
3. Use ThemeChangedFcn to swap brand colors when OS/user toggles dark mode
4. Use fliplightness() to auto-derive dark brand colors from light definitions
5. Leave ColorMode = "auto" on components wherever possible

What breaks automatic theming — setting any color explicitly switches ColorMode to "manual":

btn.BackgroundColor = [0.2 0.4 0.8];  % Now manual — won't adapt to theme
btn.BackgroundColorMode = "auto";       % Restore theme control

Color Types in MATLAB

Type	API	When to use
Component colors	btn.BackgroundColor, lbl.FontColor	UI element branding
Series colors	colororder(colors) or colororder("palette")	Multiple lines/bars/scatter in one axes
Continuous colors	colormap(map)	Heatmaps, surfaces, contours, images
Cell/row styling	uistyle + addStyle	Conditional formatting in tables/trees

• colororder = categorical (series A, B, C get distinct colors)
• colormap = continuous (scalar values mapped to gradient)
• Don't confuse them — they serve different purposes

Importing External Color Schemes

Workflow

1. Pick a scheme from Material Design, Adobe Color, Tailwind, etc.
2. Extract 5-7 key colors: primary, secondary, error, success, warning, border + 5-7 chart series colors
3. Convert hex to [R G B] normalized 0-1: rgb = sscanf(hex(2:end), '%2x', 3)' / 255
4. Map to theme struct fields: theme.primary, theme.secondary, etc.
5. Test both modes: verify fliplightness() produces acceptable dark variants; override manually if not
6. Apply via applyBrandColors: the function reads the struct and sets tagged components

See references/external-schemes.md for complete Material Design, Adobe Color, and Tailwind import examples.

Implementation Checklist

Styling

• Brand colors centralized in createTheme struct
• fliplightness() used for dark variants
• Branded components tagged for findall lookup
• ThemeChangedFcn wired to re-apply brand colors
• colororder set from theme.plotColors
• No explicit colors on auto-themed components

Troubleshooting

Problem	Cause	Fix
Component doesn't change with dark mode	Color set explicitly	Remove explicit color or set BackgroundColorMode = "auto"
fliplightness not found	MATLAB < R2025a	Upgrade or define manual dark colors
Chart colors don't update on theme switch	colororder not re-applied	Add colororder(ax, theme.plotColors) to theme handler
findall returns empty	Tag not set or misspelled	Verify Tag property matches exactly

References

Topic	File	Description
Theme API	references/theme-api.md	R2025a lock/detect/react, auto vs manual theming
Component colors	references/component-colors.md	Color properties table + uistyle for tables/trees
External schemes	references/external-schemes.md	Material Design, Adobe Color, Tailwind import workflows

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