# Customizing appearance and branding

Customers that require their own brand to be prominent across the product can change the appearance of both Workspace and Builder to their needs. This also reduces the presence of the CARTO brand to basemap attribution-only, and makes publicly shared maps neutral so that they can be integrated in your own portals and websites.

{% hint style="info" %}
Appearance customizations are only available to select customers on **Strategic** plans, and they need to be manually enabled by CARTO. If you’re interested in this feature, please get in touch at [sales@carto.com](https://docs.carto.com/carto-user-manual/settings/customizing-appearance-and-branding/sales@carto.com).
{% endhint %}

To customize the appearance of CARTO, go to **Settings** > **Customizations**.

<figure><img src="/files/YGS20F5CCpD9f7vTlwGg" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

## Appearance

If you click on **Customize Appearance**, this section will let you set your own brand and colors so that all users view them when entering and using CARTO. This also affects the color of Builder widgets and other styles.

You can define the following styles:

* **Logo**: the logo in the header. It needs to be a square image file (like an avatar) with a minimum dimensions of 256x256 pixels and a maximum file size of 1MB.
* **Primary color**: the primary color used in the UI. Buttons in Workspace and Builder will use this color.
* **Secondary color**: this color is used for accent and in some components for data visualization. For example, widgets in Builder will use this color.
* **Use primary colors for the App bar (header)**: enable this option if you want to reuse the primary color for the header in Builder and Workspace. Disable that option if you want to customize the header.

If the “Use primary colors…” setting is disabled:

* **App bar background**: set this color to customize the header background.
* **App bar contrast text**: set this color to customize some components that need contrast with the background in the header.

<figure><img src="/files/owaBHaWsXmsrS5wGhL1E" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

Once you “Save Changes”, the UI will start applying the new styles. Some changes might take a bit to appear. Remember that these settings will be applied to all users and viewers.

<figure><img src="/files/1a0PpO2aUh4bzp6qFQL5" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

## Custom color palettes

Admins can define custom color palettes to be used for [styling maps in the Builder](/carto-user-manual/maps/layers.md#fill-color). These palettes can have 3-20 steps and can be of any type (diverging, sequential, qualitative or singlehue).

<figure><img src="/files/YuKYRM9bgDna3RF2EPbQ" alt=""><figcaption><p>Detailed view of a custom palette</p></figcaption></figure>

Once created, custom color palettes can be used in the Builder if the palette **type** matches and the number of color **steps** is less than or equal to the number of steps in the saved custom palette.

<figure><img src="/files/lzSWlpdKzR1nUiTQIm0Q" alt=""><figcaption><p>Applying a custom palette in the Builder</p></figcaption></figure>

## Public and embedded maps

You can also decide if you want the public and embedded maps to use the CARTO footer, which contains the CARTO brand and links to share the map on social media. This setting affects all maps, including existing ones.

<figure><img src="/files/41SqWy9jUpn6vaTar8IB" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

{% hint style="info" %}
**Can I add my own logo to the map?**

Not at the moment. This may be something we include in the future but for now, the recommended best practice is to keep the map neutral and then embed it in a corporate website that contains your logo and brand identity.
{% endhint %}

## Onboarding

In some cases, new viewers and editors could get distracted by the regular onboarding experience including demo maps. If you want to disable this experience you can do so by disabling `Show onboarding to new users`.

<figure><img src="/files/PoBhPMvg3LzNUJMzGJh0" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>


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