How to Change Chart Style in Google Sheets
A well-designed chart can make your data easy to understand at a glance, but the default styles in Google Sheets don't always hit the mark. The good news is that you have full control to customize nearly every visual element of your chart. This article will walk you through exactly how to change your chart's style, from swapping chart types to fine-tuning colors, fonts, and labels for a professional finish.
Finding the Google Sheets Chart Editor
Before you can customize anything, you need to open the Chart editor. First, click on your chart to select it. You'll see three small vertical dots appear in the upper-right corner of the chart. Click these dots, then select "Edit chart."
This will open the Chart editor pane on the right side of your screen. This powerful pane is divided into two main tabs: Setup and Customize. We'll be spending most of our time in the Customize tab to style our chart.
How to Change Your Chart Type
The most fundamental style change you can make is altering the chart type itself. Different data stories call for different types of visualizations. For example, a line chart is perfect for showing a trend over time, while a pie chart is best for displaying parts of a whole.
You can change this in the Setup tab of the Chart editor.
Step-by-step guide:
With the Chart editor open, make sure you are in the Setup tab.
Look for the "Chart type" dropdown menu near the top.
Click on it to see a list of available chart types, such as Line, Area, Column, Bar, Pie, Scatter, and more.
As you hover over different options, Google Sheets will often provide a real-time preview of how your data looks in that format.
Select the one that best represents your data.
Pro Tip: Google will sometimes suggest chart types based on your data structure. These are a good starting point, but don't be afraid to experiment to find the clearest way to present your information.
Customizing Your Chart's Appearance
This is where you can truly make your chart your own. Click over to the Customize tab in the Chart editor. Here, you'll find a set of accordions, each controlling a different aspect of your chart's design.
1. Chart style
This section controls the overall foundation of your chart. It's the place to set the mood and general aesthetic.
Background color: Change the color of the entire chart area. You can pick from a palette, enter a hex code for brand consistency, or set it to "None" for a transparent background.
Font: Set a universal font for all the text on your chart. This creates a consistent look for your titles, labels, and legend.
Chart border color: Add a colored border around the chart area to help it stand out, especially if it's placed on a colored background or alongside other elements in a report.
Maximize: This is a useful checkbox for column or bar charts. Ticking it removes some of the white space on the sides, making the bars wider and more prominent.
3D: For certain charts like column and pie charts, you can check this box to give them a three-dimensional appearance. Use this sparingly, as 3D charts can sometimes make data harder to interpret accurately.
2. Chart & axis titles
Clear, descriptive titles are critical for understanding any chart. This section lets you modify the titles for the entire chart, the horizontal axis (X-axis), and the vertical axis (Y-axis).
Under the "Title text" field, you can type your desired title. Below that, you have a wealth of formatting options:
Title font & font size: Choose a font that is easy to read and adjust the size so it's prominent but not overwhelming. It's good practice to make the main Chart title larger than your axis titles.
Title format: Make your titles bold or italicized for emphasis.
Title text color: Match your brand colors or simply choose a color that has high contrast against your background for better readability.
For example, you might change the generic "Sales vs Month" to a more descriptive "Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) - Q4 2023."
3. Series
The "Series" is your actual data representation - the bars, lines, or pie slices. This is one of the most important sections for styling a chart to be clear and visually engaging.
If you have multiple data series on one chart (e.g., showing sales for "Product A," "Product B," and "Product C"), you'll see a dropdown menu at the top of this section allowing you to apply formatting to all series at once or select a specific one to edit individually.
Here’s what you can customize:
Color: The most common change you'll make. Click the color swatch to change the fill color for your bars, area, or pie slices, or the line color for line charts. Assigning distinct colors to different series is key to making your chart understandable.
Line thickness / Line dash type (Line charts): Make your lines thicker for emphasis or change them to dashed lines to represent forecasts or secondary data.
Point size & shape (Line/Scatter charts): Add or modify the markers on your data points (e.g., circles, triangles, stars) to help them stand out.
Adding Key Information Directly on the Chart
In this section, you will also find a handful of incredibly useful checkboxes that add more context directly to your data visualization, reducing the need for the viewer to look back and forth between the series and the axes.
Data labels: When checked, this will display the exact value of each data point on the chart. You can then format the label's font, color, position (e.g., center, inside end, outside end), and number format (e.g., currency, percentage). This is a game-changer for clarity.
Error bars: In statistical charts, you can add error bars to show the variability or uncertainty in your data points.
Trendline: For scatter plots or line charts, adding a trendline displays the general direction of your data. You can choose different types (Linear, Exponential, Polynomial) and customize its color and thickness to show growth, decline, or correlation.
4. Legend
The legend helps viewers identify which color corresponds to which data series. While essential for multi-series charts, it can sometimes be removed for single-series charts to save space.
Position: Change the placement of the legend to the top, bottom, left, right, or inside the chart area. The best position often depends on your chart's overall shape and where it will be presented. "Top" or "Right" are common, clean choices.
Legend font, format, and color: Just like titles, you can customize the legend's text to match the rest of your chart's aesthetic.
5. Gridlines and Ticks
Gridlines are the faint lines that run across the chart's plot area and help viewers align a data point with its value on an axis. Customizing them can reduce visual clutter and improve readability.
Under this accordion, you can select which axis's gridlines you want to edit. For the vertical axis, you have several options:
Major gridlines: These are the primary lines corresponding to the labels on your axis. You can change their color or remove them entirely by setting the color to "None." A light gray is usually effective without being distracting.
Minor gridlines: You can add intermediate lines between the major ones for more granular analysis. You can specify how many "minor counts" you want between each major gridline.
Major ticks: These are small lines extending from the axis itself, which you can position inside, outside, or across the axis line.
Advanced Styling Example: Creating a Combination Chart
Sometimes a single chart type isn’t enough. For instance, what if you want to show monthly sales volume (as bars) and the gross margin percentage (as a line) on the same chart? This requires a Combination Chart.
Start by selecting all your data and creating a basic Column chart.
Open the Chart editor and go to the Customize tab, and then to the Series section.
In the "Apply to all series" dropdown, select the series you want to change (in our case, "Gross Margin").
Now, look at the options on the right and you'll find an "Axis" dropdown, likely set to "Left axis." Change this to Right axis.
Your Gross Margin data will now be plotted against a new numerical axis on the right side of your chart. But it might still be shown as tiny bars. Here's the final touch...
Navigate back to the Setup tab and change the Chart type to Combo chart. Google Sheets is smart enough to represent one series as bars and another as a line on its own axis. You've now cleanly visualized two different metrics together!
Final Thoughts
Mastering chart customization in Google Sheets is about transforming your raw data from numbers in a grid to a clear, compelling story. By methodically using the options in the Chart editor, you can graduate from generic-looking graphs to polished, brand-aligned visuals that make an immediate impact on your audience.
Manually creating and styling these reports is a great skill, but it can become tedious, especially when you're working with data from different places like Google Analytics, Shopify, and social media ads. This is where we built Graphed to simplify the entire process. Rather than wrestling with manual exports and style settings, you just connect your platforms and ask for the report you want in plain English - for instance, "Show me my Facebook ad spend versus my Shopify revenue over the last month." We instantly build a live, interactive dashboard for you, keeping everything up-to-date automatically so you can focus on insights instead of setup.