Setup

Pipeline stage colors

Give every stage in the pipeline whatever color you want: automatic, a theme color, or a custom hex shade. The color paints the column header on the Board and the pipeline preview on the Pipelines screen, so progress reads at a glance.

A board with ten gray columns forces you to read every heading. With color, the eye finds its own way: blue for what is being worked, amber for negotiation, green for won, red for lost. Stage color exists to turn the Board into a dashboard you can read in a second.

Where to choose it

Open Settings and, under Customization, click Pipelines.
Click Edit on the pipeline you want to adjust, or New pipeline.
On each row of the Stages list, look for the Color control, a round button showing the current color.
Click it to open the picker and choose the option you want.
Click Save on the pipeline. The color is only stored when the pipeline is saved.

The three options in the picker

Automatic: keeps the color the system derives from the stage itself. Known stages get a color with meaning, for example won in green and lost in red; the rest get a stable color, always the same one for that stage.
Theme colors: a grid of ten colors that match the product's identity. One click picks it, and the selected color is highlighted.
Custom: choose an exact shade with your operating system's color picker or type the hex code, in the format #1092FD, to match your brand color.

The picker closes when you click outside it or press the ESC key, like every pop-up in the system. To go back, reopen it and choose Automatic: the stage returns to the default.

Where the color shows up

On the Pipelines screen itself, just below each pipeline, there is a preview with the colored columns and the probability of each stage, so you can check the whole set before calling it done. Day to day, the color paints the column header on the Board, including when the column is collapsed, and the system works out a legible text tone over the background you chose, so no combination ends up unreadable.

Example: In the Direct sales pipeline, the team sets Qualification to theme blue, Proposal to indigo, Negotiation to amber, Won to green and Lost to red. For the Technical pilot stage, which is an internal initiative, they use Custom with the hex code #1092FD, the brand color. On the Board, the manager sees the pileup in amber from across the room and knows where the pipeline is stalling.

Who can do it

Editing pipelines and stages, color included, requires permission to manage settings. The color you choose applies to the whole organization: it is not a personal preference of whoever set it.

Common questions

I picked a color and nothing changed: check that you clicked Save on the pipeline. The picker only records the choice on the stage draft.
Does color change how the pipeline behaves? No. Color is presentation. What decides whether a stage counts as won or lost is the Outcome field, and probability is still the stage percentage.
Can I use the same color on two stages? You can, but do not: the value of color is in telling things apart.
I typed a hex code and it was not accepted: use the six-digit format starting with a hash, such as #22C55E. Clearing the field returns the stage to Automatic.
Is it worth keeping colors consistent across pipelines? Yes. Always using the same meaning, for example red for risk, lets the team read any board without learning it again.

Open this article inside the system →