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Ethan’s Admin Palettes

Part of my Free WordPress Plugins and Themes section.

WordPress ships with eight admin color schemes. That’s been true for years, and it’s fine, but eight options starts to feel thin once you’re logging into two dozen different sites every week and everything in wp-admin looks the same shade of blue-gray. Even if you already have another plugin that offers a few more, you run through them pretty fast.

EAP is a color scheme plugin built to permanently fix that. There are 40 additional dashboard color schemes right out of the box, plus a settings panel for easily building your own, as many as you want, from scratch.

You now have endless design opportunities–you can even match the colors to the color scheme of your website.

40 more ways to color your dashboard

Once EAP is active, you’ll find a full new lineup of admin color schemes sitting right alongside the WordPress defaults under Users → Profile → Admin Color Scheme.

some of the color palette options for the wordpress admin user dashboard

No setup, no configuration, you load the plugin and they’re just there. Pick one, save your profile, and your sidebar and admin bar update immediately.

The palette names run from warm and earthy (Terracotta, Amber, Copper, Bronze) through greens and blues (Fern, Emerald, Sapphire, Cerulean) into deeper jewel tones (Byzantium, Amethyst, Garnet) and a few cooler neutrals (Slate, Graphite) for anyone who wants a more understated dashboard. Every one of them recolors the full admin experience (incl. menu, admin bar, buttons, links, focus states), not just a single accent color dropped on top of the default theme.

Or build your own

This is the part I actually built the plugin around. Settings → Admin Palettes gives you a full color customization panel: eight color pickers covering menu background, menu text, menu icons, menu highlight colors, admin bar background and text, and an accent color for links and buttons. Type in a hex code directly or use the picker, whichever’s easier.

menu screenshot of the custom color choosing options for designing your own wordpress color scheme

The part that makes it worth using over just guessing at hex values: as you adjust each color, the actual sidebar and admin bar on that settings page repaint themselves live, right there while you’re working. It’s a real preview of your real dashboard, not a mockup or a swatch, so you can see exactly how a palette will look before you commit to it.

Once you’re happy with it, name it and save it, and it will show up on the Profile screen exactly like a built-in scheme, ready to select any time.

Custom palettes stick around after you save them, listed right on the settings page with quick edit and delete links, so tweaking a color scheme you built last year takes seconds.

Where to find it

  • Pick a scheme: Users → Profile → Admin Color Scheme
  • Build your own: Settings → Admin Palettes

Good to know

Every custom scheme you build is saved cleanly and won’t collide with color schemes from any other plugin you might already have installed. Everything here is clearly its own separate set of options on the Profile screen, not a replacement for what you had before. If you ever deactivate or delete the plugin, your custom creations and their files go with it; the 40 built-in palettes are just part of the plugin itself, so they come and go the same way.

Made mostly because I got tired of my own dashboard looking identical across every single site I manage, and thought other people juggling multiple WordPress installs might feel the same way.

Please note that this is presented as-is with no warranty or support because I am just a guy online offering you free stuff. Refer back to the full disclaimer here.

If you find this useful I would love to know your thoughts and comments. I just hope you get some use out of it and I’d love a thank you email if you do. Contact me here.

Download Link

DOWNLOAD ETHAN’S WP ADMIN PALETTES PLUGIN

Have a nice day!