Card Colors

Card Colors

Conditional formatting paints your cards by their data. Define rules that match work items by their field values, then apply a visual effect — a background tint, an accent line, a faded border, a corner flag, or a colored field chip. You can also map a numeric field across a color scale so cards heat up as the value rises.

A BetterBoard board with several card-color effects applied at once: colored side lines, tinted backgrounds, faded border gradients, and corner accents distinguish work items across the Mobile App columns.
Several effects at work on one board — side lines, backgrounds, border gradients, and corner accents layered across cards.

How card colors work

Card colors are a list of rules attached to a board. BetterBoard evaluates every rule against each card and applies the colors that match. There are two kinds of rule:

  • Single color — match work items by their field values (using the same conditions as board filters) and paint them one fixed color.
  • Color scale — pick a numeric field and blend across a gradient, so the color reflects how large the value is.

Every rule applies one effect — where and how the color shows up on the card. Rules are listed in priority order and you can add up to ten per board.

Card colors are display-only. They never change the work item in Jira — they just change how it looks on this board.

Opening the panel

Open the board's Display settings and select Card colors. You can also jump straight there by pressing Shift+C anywhere on the board, or by running Open color options… from the command palette.

The panel lists your rules, each with a small live preview of its effect. Use the + button to add a rule, drag rules to reorder them, and use the duplicate action to clone a rule you want to tweak. Each rule has a toggle switch — flip it off to mute a rule without deleting it, then flip it back on whenever you need it.

Single-color rules

A single-color rule colors any card that matches its conditions.

Conditions

Conditions use the same field, operator, and value pickers as board filters — pick a field (Priority, Status, Assignee, a label, a number, and so on), an operator (is, is not, contains, is empty…), and the values to match. A rule can hold up to two conditions; when you set both, a card must satisfy both of them to be colored.

Color

Pick a color from the palette. Each swatch is tuned for legibility and previews in both light and dark mode.

Effect

Choose where the color appears — see Effects below.

Examples. Priority is Highest → red side line. Flagged is not empty → amber background. Assignee is Current user → tinted assignee chip.

Color scales

Switch a rule to Color scale to blend a color from a numeric field, such as Story points or a rating.

  • Scale field — the number the scale reads. Only numeric fields are offered.
  • Stops — three points, Start, Mid, and End, each with a value and a color. A card's value is interpolated between the surrounding stops to produce its exact color.

Out-of-range values clamp to the nearest end: anything at or below the Start value gets the Start color, anything at or above the End value gets the End color. The default scale runs 0 green → 5 yellow → 13 red — a story-point heat map.

Stop values must move in one direction — consistently increasing or consistently decreasing. A scale whose values zig-zag is invalid and won't color any cards until you fix it. Cards whose scale field is empty or non-numeric are left uncolored.

Effects

The effect decides where the color lands on the card. Six are available:

  • Side lineA thin colored bar down the left edge of the card. Subtle and stackable.
  • Top lineA thin colored bar across the top of the card.
  • BackgroundTints the whole card. The strongest, most scannable effect — best for one or two high-signal rules.
  • Border gradientA colored border with a soft diagonal fade from the color into the card surface.
  • CornerA colored accent in the corner of the card — a small flag that doesn't compete with the card body.
  • ChipTints a single field's chip rather than the card. The text color flips automatically to stay readable on the fill.
Chip coloring needs a visible field. The chip effect colors the field the rule matches on, so that field has to be shown on the card — add it to the card in Display fields. The summary, people, parent, flag, and long-text fields can't be chip-colored.

How rules combine

BetterBoard walks your rules from top to bottom. The key principle is simple:

  • Each effect is claimed once. The first matching rule that wants a given effect wins it; later rules asking for the same effect are skipped. So if two rules both set the Background, the higher one in the list takes effect.
  • Different effects stack. A single card can carry a background from one rule, a side line from another, and a tinted chip from a third — they layer together.

Because order is priority, drag your most important rule to the top. Chip effects are tracked per field, so two rules can color two different chips at once.

Light and dark themes

Every palette color ships with a matching dark variant, so a card you color in Jira's light theme stays legible when a teammate views the same board in dark mode — the colors shift to their darker counterparts automatically. Chip text picks white or near-black based on the fill's brightness so labels never wash out.

Notes & limitations

  • Up to 10 rules per board.
  • A single-color rule supports up to two conditions, combined with AND.
  • Color scales need a numeric field; empty or non-numeric values aren't colored.
  • Chip coloring needs the matched field shown on the card.
  • Colors are part of the board configuration — on a shared board, everyone sees the same colors.
  • A rule can be toggled off without deleting it, so you can keep a formatting recipe around and switch it on when you need it.

Related

Filters & Refinement Display Fields Columns & Grouping