Curious about the visual changes in HubSpot’s product? We know that a visual refresh can feel like a big shift, that’s why we’re creating a space for open conversation, transparency, and support to help you understand what’s changing and why.
Join us for an Ask Me Anything (AMA) event from September 8–12 where Hayley Hughes, Product Design Director, and members of her design systems team will be on hand to answer your questions about the updated look and feel of our product.
You can try the new visual theme by opening your Account menu in HubSpot’s top navigation and selecting the “Switch to the new theme” link. Try using it for a few days so you can tell us how the new look and feel changes your product experience.
Get your questions answered directly by the people designing these changes
Understand the reasoning behind our design decisions
Learn about what’s staying the same and what’s evolving
Share your feedback and concerns with our design team
Discover the latest accessibility improvements and what’s coming next
We’ll discuss:
Why we’re making these changes and how you’ll benefit from them
What, specifically, is changing visually in the product and why
Our goals for these changes, such as improving accessibility
We’d especially like to hear your feedback! What’s working well for you and what’s not?
Drop your questions in the comments below and we’ll get back to you between September 8–12. We’re excited to connect with you and help you make the most of HubSpot’s visual refresh.
+1 for darkening the colour. I don’t have any sight issues but am still finding the new layout immediately straining on my eyes to look at, it’s actually quite hard to focus on anything.
Thanks for sharing this, @TomM2! We’ve heard from some customers that the lighter colors make it harder to focus, even without vision concerns. The intent behind the update was to improve accessibility by using higher contrast and simpler layouts, but we know it doesn’t always feel that way in practice.
Could you please share any specific pages or workflows that feel most straining for you? That helps us target improvements where they matter most.
p.s. I’m not a huge fan of both new colors because of red-green color-blindness aspect. I’m thankfully not affected by this, but would love to know why the decision was made to go with the most unaccessible colors. Especially with the orange on green (like in different media like docs, website…)
Hi @WMM_Inbound! Right now, we don’t offer color theme choices. Our priority has been to create a consistent, accessible foundational theme across the product.
However, if we were to offer more options in the future, where in the product would flexibility like this make the biggest difference in your day-to-day work?
Hi @John! Thanks for the question. We’ve heard feedback about the navigation being both too dark and too light. This specific shade of the magenta was selected to align with our new brand palette. We wanted to maintain a modern palette that was aligned with the HubSpot brand orange without competing with our primary brand color. The goal is to provide a strong, recognizable color as the anchor for a more neutral, lighter interface. At this time, we don’t have a darker or lighter variant for the navigation.
Understood.
I talk to a lot of users as a HubSpot partner, and roughly 4 out of 5 people I talk with want a darker sidebar and topbar. I always receive feedback like, “something just feels off with this color.”
Hopefully y’all will listen and create a darker variant. I really like a lot of the changes. Keep up the great work!
agree. the current shade of magenta makes the white font/icons actuallly look slightly pink, and there’s a lot of visual flash to them on a high-res screen.
Thanks for the helpful feedback, @melindagreen! We will test the dark magenta with the white font and icons on different screens to improve contrast and adjust our colors as needed while keeping accessibility intact. We will look out for any color distortion from the contrast as well.
Is the bigger goal with the new theme color going to be utilizing the account’s brand colors and allowing them to customize their platform around their brand?!
We’re testing the new, improved company and contact record layout, and love it. We helped sculpt the conditional options on all cards and sections. We’re also testing out the flexible crm views betas and loving them! You’re on the right path here.
Adding UI extensibility is a game-changer.
I’d love to know if there’s going to be the ability to turn off menu items on the left by user views? It’s getting overwhelming where a sales rep sees the Marketing tab at all. It would be nice to have in custom views the ability to manipulate the tabs on the left menu as well!
"It would be nice to have in custom views the ability to manipulate the tabs on the left menu as well! " - I second this, especially if cognitive load is a big part of the consideration.
It would also go well with the fact that Cards have the ability to be either shown/hidden based on certain conditions.
You’re right, reducing cognitive load is one of our top design goals. We’ve heard similar feedback that tailoring the navigation menu by role or workflow could make HubSpot easier to use. While this isn’t possible today, we’ve laid some of the groundwork for more flexibility like this in the future. We want HubSpot to be a CRM that works with you, not against you. I’m glad you’re enjoying the card conditionality! More functionality like that is coming soon.
Hi, JSmith. We are currently researching the ability to turn off menu items in the left navigating bar. If you’d like to chat and hear more about our plans you can feel free to book time with me here. We would love to get your feedback.
I personally really like the idea to offer the option to match your brand colors/kit and we’ve heard this suggestion from several customers and partners. We’ll be evaluating this in our next iteration phases.
maybe the primary brand color can become a special “highlight” color or something, like “choose a theme that you like and combine it with your brands main color”, or something like that. Because than i can make sure that my bright yellow color is not sitting on a orange/red nav bar, which would be super hard to read, but more on a darker blue / black nav bar.
So glad to hear the new layouts and flexible views are helping your team. Extensibility is a major goal for us, and what you’re testing now is just the start of giving teams more control.
On navigation, you’re spot on. Many customers tell us that tailoring what people see by role would make HubSpot feel simpler and more focused. That isn’t available today, but it’s something we’re actively thinking about. Would trimming the left menu be most valuable for reducing distraction for sales reps, or for enforcing clearer permissions by role?
