How do I change the colours, dot style and corners of a QR code?

Start with a theme

Themes is the first section on the design step — "One-click professional designs — customize any of them below". Clicking one sets the dot pattern, colours and corner styles together, and everything below stays editable afterwards.

There are ten: Classic, Beads, Ruby, Royal, Forest, Blush, Ocean, Slate, Grape and Ember. All ten are built to scan, so a theme is the fastest safe starting point if you are designing by eye rather than to a brand guide.

Change the colours and the dot pattern

Expand QR Code Style ("Dot patterns and colors").

1. Dot Pattern — six shapes for the body of the code: Square, Dots, Rounded, Pill, Classy and Mixed.
2. Preset — eight colour swatches. One click sets the dots and both corner colours together, which is the quickest way to keep a code coherent.
3. Dots Color and Background — the two colour pickers, for an exact brand colour.
4. Invert — swaps the dot and background colours. Use it to preview a reversed code, then check the warning below.
5. Margin — a slider from 0 to 50 px that sets the quiet zone around the code.

There is also a Transparent background checkbox here; see downloading a QR code with a transparent background for what it does in each file format.

Change the corners

The three large squares in the corners are how a camera finds and orients the code, so they get their own section, Corners ("Corner shape and color").

• Border Style — the outer ring: Square, Circle or Rounded.
• Center Style — the block inside it: Default, Square or Dot.
• Border Color and Center Color — separate pickers, so you can pick out the corners in a second brand colour.

Corners can be a different colour from the body of the code, and often should be — it is the cheapest way to make a code look designed rather than generated. Keep both dark against the background.

The contrast rule

The wizard says it plainly under the colour pickers: "Use high-contrast colors for reliable scanning." What that means in practice:

• Dark pattern, light background. A camera looks for dark modules on a light field. Light-on-dark codes scan on some phones and fail on others, so treat Invert as a preview, not a finished design.
• Avoid pale dot colours. Yellow, light grey and pastels lose against a white background under shop lighting or on newsprint.
• Leave the quiet zone alone. Keep Margin at 10 px or more and do not let artwork, a fold or a trim edge run into it.
• Do not put the code on a photo. Even a strong dot colour fails over a busy or mid-tone image.

More examples of what these controls can do are on the custom QR code generator page.

Common problems

My brand colour makes the code unreliable

Use the brand colour on the Corners and a darker shade of it for the dots. You keep the brand read without spending the whole contrast budget.

I changed the design and now my saved file looks different

That is expected — saving a design change regenerates the image. On a dynamic code both the old and the new pattern point at the same destination, so anything you already printed keeps working.

The design step warns that design settings were not saved

Older codes were created before we stored styling. Editing content, name, tags and settings is safe, but changing anything on the QR Design step regenerates the image from the defaults plus your new choices.

I want the same look on every code

Pick the same theme each time, or set your colours once and note the hex values. Design settings are per code — there is no account-wide default.

Frequently asked questions