Articles on: Portal & brand

Create a client theme

A client theme gives one client, or one client team, a look of their own in the client portal: their brand instead of yours. It can be used, for example, for a reseller, a white-label partner, or a client whose staff use the portal every day. Everyone else keeps the look you set in Brand › Appearance, and so does your own team; a theme cannot be given to a role.

Create and assign the theme

Open Settings › Brand › Client themes and select Create theme.
On the General tab, enter the Theme name and choose the clients and client teams in Applies to. If the theme is for a company, choose the team rather than individual people, so that people added to the team later get the theme too.
On the General, Light and Dark tabs, turn on Override only for the sections that should look different, and set them. To start from a ready-made look, use Choose a theme preset at the top.
With Live preview on, the settings pages show the theme as you edit it. Then publish the theme. Clients do not see a theme that is still in Draft.
Open the client's profile and use View as client to see the theme on their real account. See View the portal as a client.

The General tab of a client theme: its name and the clients it applies to (2), and Override on a section (3).

The Light tab: a theme can use its own sidebar logo, and overrides only the sections you turn on (3).

Ideas for client themes

A white-label partner who resells your service gets their own colours and sidebar logo, so their clients never see your brand.
A key account gets a portal in their own brand colours. It is a small touch that makes your service feel built for them.
A client team with a dark-mode habit, such as a studio, gets a theme that overrides only the Dark tab.

Every option you can override is listed in Every appearance setting, explained.

A theme stores only what you override

A theme has the same three tabs as Appearance (General, Light and Dark) and the same sections: typography, accent colour, links, background, page surface, sidebar, top bar, controls and contrast. Light and Dark also have Sidebar logo, where the theme can use its own logo or hide it.

Every section you do not override keeps coming from Brand › Appearance, now and in the future. If you change the workspace accent colour, every theme that does not override the accent changes with it. When Zendo adds a new appearance setting, your themes pick it up from Appearance as well. The fewer sections a theme overrides, the more of your workspace look it keeps following; a theme that overrides everything no longer follows it at all.

A client theme cannot change whether clients can switch between light and dark mode, or which mode they see by default. Both are set once for the whole workspace, under Color mode on Settings › Brand › Appearance. See Set your workspace appearance.

Which theme a client gets

Each client sees exactly one theme: the one that applies to them, or Brand › Appearance if none does. If two themes apply, for example one chosen for the client and one for their team, the most recently published theme wins.

What a theme does not change

A theme only changes the client portal. Emails from Zendo keep the logo and colours set in Brand › Domain & email, and quotes and invoices keep the document logo from Sales › Payments & documents.

What the client can open — the sidebar, the dashboard and the onboarding cards — is set in Settings › Portal, not in the theme. See Show different things to different clients.

Updated on: 09/11/2026

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