Themes
Make every guide look like your product. Set a theme for the whole project, override it for a single guide, or tweak just one step — all with a live preview, so you see changes instantly.
Here’s a quick tour.
Project default
Set your brand once and every new guide inherits it.
Override anywhere
Change the look for a single guide, or even a single step.
Live preview
See exactly how it looks as you edit.
Live in three steps.
Set your theme
Pick colors, shapes, and type for the project.
Override as needed
Adjust a specific guide or step.
Publish
Guides ship looking like you.
Styling every guide once, in the theme cascade.
The goal is guides users assume are part of your product. The cascade — project theme, per-guide override, per-step override — is how you get there without styling anything twice.
Set the project theme
In Brand & styling: primary buttons in your brand color, secondary as ghosts, corner roundness matching your app, backdrop at 40%, progress as "Step 1 of 3" numbers, your font stack.
Watch the live preview
Every change renders instantly on a sample guide beside the controls — you are styling against the real components, not a swatch grid.
Override where it earns it
The Black Friday banner gets its own colors at the guide level; one dramatic modal overrides width and backdrop at the step level. The cascade means exceptions stay exceptions.
Let custom CSS do the last 5%
A scoped stylesheet targeting .card, .btn, .banner, .beacon handles the details no control covers — and cannot leak into your page.
What to expect: New guides are born on-brand — nobody styles anything on a Tuesday launch. When users cannot tell where your product ends and the guide begins, the theme is doing its job.
When not to use themes.
No pattern fits every job. Here’s where we’d point you at something else — sometimes ours, sometimes not.
Styling per guide out of habit
If every guide carries overrides, you do not have a theme — you have thirty snowflakes. Fold the common choices back into the project theme and reserve overrides for genuine exceptions.
Custom CSS as the first resort
Reach for the structured controls first; they survive updates and are editable by non-engineers. CSS is the escape hatch for the last 5%, not the front door.
Off-brand attention grabs
Making a promo deliberately clash with your product buys clicks at the cost of trust — users read visual mismatch as advertising. Stay in the system; use copy and timing for urgency.
What does a theme control?
Primary and secondary button colors, button shape and box roundness (sharp / default / round), backdrop darkness (0–80%), tour progress style (bar or step numbers) and its color, typography (font family, base size 11–20px, heading weight), hotspot beacon color and size, and banner defaults.
How does the cascade resolve conflicts?
Most specific wins: step overrides beat guide overrides beat the project theme. Every override field has "reset to theme", so returning an experiment to the system is one click, not a hunt.
Can guides use our brand font?
Yes — choose from the built-in stacks or supply a custom font stack. A custom font renders when the visitor's browser has it loaded; since your app already loads your brand font on the page, listing it picks it up. System default is the safe fallback everywhere.
Is the custom CSS sandboxed?
Scoped to Wakeline's widgets — classes like .card, .btn, .banner, .beacon — and unable to affect your page's own styles. The isolation runs both ways: your page CSS does not bleed into guides either.
Can different guides use different themes?
Multiple themes per project are supported — one for product guides, a louder one for marketing moments — with per-guide selection. Most teams need exactly one good theme; reach for a second deliberately.
See it on your own app.
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