Google already offers an excellent selection of colors for customizing your Google Calendar just the way you want. However, some people may find the list of colors a bit limited, which is why the company even lets you add custom colors to different calendars. This means that the level of customization that is possible when it comes to colors is almost unlimited. If you want to learn how to customize your Google Calendar with custom colors, here is how you can do so.

Step 1: Select a color palette

The first thing you need to do is to generate a color palette, which you can do in various ways, such as visiting a third-party website like Coolors for this purpose.

  1. Visit the Coolors website and press the Spacebar to create a new color palette.
  1. You can continue generating palettes until you find one you like. Once you've selected a palette, you need to copy the hex code for each color in the palette. To do so, hover over the color, click on the 'Copy hex' option when it appears, and save it somewhere else. Do this for all the colors in the palette.

Step 2: Set custom colors in your Google Calendar

  1. Go to the Google Calendar website and sign in with your Google account.
  2. On the left side, click on the '+' icon next to the 'Other calendars' option to create a new calendar.
  1. Click on the 'Create new calendar' option in the pop-up that appears.
  1. On the next page, add a name and a description for the new calendar, and then click on the 'Create calendar' button.
  1. Once you've created a new calendar, it will appear on the left under the 'My Calendars' section. You can create other calendars in the same manner for different categories.
  2. Now you can set the color of the calendars you have created. Hover your mouse cursor over the name of the calendar whose color you want to set and click on the three dots that appear next to its name.
  1. This will show you the available colors you can use to customize your calendar. To use a custom color, click on the '+' icon that appears below the default colors.
  1. When you click on the '+' icon, a color swatch will appear from which you can pick a custom color. To use any of the colors you saved from the Coolors website, copy the hex codes you saved and paste them into the box that appears below the swatch along with the #. Then click on the 'Save' option.
  1. You can repeat these steps to add more colors from your palette to the calendar and customize other calendars in the same manner.

Step 3: Set up new calendar events

You won't need to fiddle with your calendar colors when setting up events every time once you set up custom colors.

  1. To create a new event, simply click on a date in your calendar and then type in the name of the event.
  1. Add other details such as information regarding the guests, location, and description, and then click on the 'Save' button. You will see that your custom color will be applied to the event automatically.

Things to know

  • Each calendar you create will use the custom color you have selected for it by default. This means you won't need to change the color after creating a new event every time.
  • Custom colors you add to your Google Calendar also work well in Dark Mode, but it is a good idea to test which colors are easy to see and look well when using it.
  • Currently, there is no way to remove a custom color once you've added it to the selection of colors available, but since you can add multiple colors, this should not be an issue for most users.
  • Your custom colors will reflect across all your devices where you use Google Calendar, including mobile devices like iPhones and Android.