A lot of people aren’t actually aware that Gmail has more than one look to it. Laugh if you will, but it simply doesn’t occur to a couple folks that they can customize their email experience. Even those who would like to usually have absolutely no idea where to start. Here’s a short, simple how to guide on creating your own theme.

1. Open the “Mail Settings” Menu

It’s the little gear at the top right corner of the page.

2. Go to the “Themes” Tab

On the top bar of the options menu, select the “Themes” Tab. If you’re just looking to change your theme to one of the presets, you’re pretty much done. Otherwise, move to step 3.

3. Select “Create Your Own Theme”

It’s right at the end of the list. Now, at first glance, this whole process could seem complicated, and more than a touch overwhelming. Don’t worry, it’s actually quite simple. Let’s move to step four.

4. Customize Your Theme

The whole process is actually a lot more straightforward than it looks.  You’ll see what basically amounts to your email inbox, divided into a number of different boxes, known as ‘widgets’. Clicking on a ‘widget’ will tell you what area of your Gmail page that widget corresponds to. See? It’s easy.

As such, I’m just going to offer you a few pointers here, and the rest you should be able to do yourself.

First, let’s look at the background. Mouse over the window, and click on the little arrow in the top left corner. That’ll bring up a menu with three components: Background color, text color, and link color. This’ll customize the backdrop of your email page, as well as the text for your email folders (the bar above the chatbox on the left of the screen, basically).

Now, instead of selecting a background color, you can select an image. Note that the image will not be stretched, and you can select whether to tile it horizontally, vertically, both, or not at all. Currently, the background image is the only custom image you can put into your Gmail account. You’re also unable to change the font- basically everything in the custom theme window involves changing the color of your page. So, those of you who wanted something…more? Might be out of luck, for the time being.

Anyway, once everything’s said and done, take a gander at how your gmail looks. Ensure you like what you’ve done with the page, and be certain that everything’s easily readable. Once you’ve customized and  tweaked everything to your liking,

5, Hit “Save” and You’re Done!

Like I said, it’s a lot simpler than it looks, isn’t it?

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