Ask us anything about HubSpot's new product look and feel | September 8-12, 2025

[jcolman]

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.

Learn more about HubSpot's new product look and feel from Mike Holzer, Head of UX and Executive VP at HubSpot.

This AMA is your chance to:

• 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.

— The HubSpot Design Systems Team

[MMusumeci]

I think I like it now 😂  One of our users who was strugglin with the lighter coloer really liked the change!

[WMM_Inbound]

In the next Beta, if you choose to give us color themes, could you please give us the possibility to vote on them? So that we can show which one we like and in what order?

[Hayley_Hughes]

Hi @WMM_Inbound! Thanks for the suggestion. We’ve heard from many customers that having more appearance options, including dark mode and customization, would be valuable. While we’re not currently planning an in-app voting feature, your feedback helps us prioritize what to test and release in the future.

[A_Wessolly]

I was actually not thinking about an in-app voting feature, but some way of getting the communitys feedback on this, not just via an AmA but actually asking every HubSpot User to vote on a look and feel. 


The more in think about the design, the more it feels like that there is just too little color on the right, therefore the design simply calls for a rather prominent color on the left, or else there would be not structure at all. The problem with that, is that prominent colors are often not accepted by the majority, which is why grey was the color every UI Design Team settled on it, because noone has an issue with grey. I feel like giving a little bit more color and structure opens up to the possibility to make the left a little bit less prominent.

[dsmarion]

You said you would talk about:

       "What, specifically, is changing visually in the product and why"

I would like to know the opposite.  Please talk about the things under-the-hood that have changed because I read somewhere that this redesign sets up for what is still to come and that this is not just a color change.  Can you elaborate on this?

[rczarnecki_hubs]

You’re right, our new product look and feel isn’t only about color palettes or accessibility. Under the hood, we’ve migrated HubSpot to a tokenized design system. That means instead of hundreds of one-off style decisions, we now manage a central set of design values (colors, spacing, typography, borders, etc.). This gives us scalability: one change in tokens cascades consistently across the entire platform. It also unlocks accessibility improvements and makes it feasible to introduce more appearance options in the future.

[Anton]

As somebody with a communication design background, I was shocked when I first switched to the "light theme beta". 

To me it's unfortunatelly a huge step backwards from a designers perspective.

Im working on color-calibrated 32' IPS panels running on around 20% lightness and I can say that my whole office was lit up as I switched the theme in the evening.

After a few minutes my eyes began to hurt and I couldn't test/use it properly.
The immense amount of white and the absense of color besides the small side- and top bar is not really user-friendly imo.

Besides that, the old/current design is something that people got used to over the years.

I understand that making something for everybody is extermly hard. "Building for the next decade" and evolution in general is great, but the current design seems to be unfinished and - at least to me - not thought through.

The red/burgundy and green color mix seems not to be as timeless as the blue and orange.

More like a "let's make HubSpot more human-centric", but missing the fact that red-green color blindness is the most common color blindness type. 

The Sprocket in combination with the red background the top left corner is barely visible because it's so tiny.

Sure - if you just go by numbers it's ok as it has a 4.68:1 accessibility factor and therefore meets the AA WCAG contrast ratio test, but in times when EAA(European Accessibility Act) and almost every designer&developer are trying to implement the greatest possible accessibility, 4.68:1 seems quite low and not very accessible imo. 

For comparison - the blue tints with orange highlights are/were super easy to navigate and easy for the eye.

Yes, if you just look at the numbers, the contrast ratio was lower(3.22:1) but due the cold-warm contrast of blue and orange it was much more clear and easier to see.

The current hover colors of the navigation are barely visible and the focus state of the header & sidebar elements seems to be not implemented yet as it's just the browser default.

I'm sure the whole team put a lot of thoughts and work into this, and I don't want to go over every little piece here, but to me the design looks disconnected from the new brand(green) and heartless (almost no color variation, a huge amount of white, harsh system colors for statuses...) 

Haven't tested it in depth, but it seems like the whole new thing is just a theme with different colors. No structural changes like implementing screenreader functionalities were made.

The implementation of new icons itself in something like the design manager are cool, as the "old" ones weren't that great, but the current implementation is super hard to the eye. 

A slightly different topic but - I'm looking at the new marketplace right now. Each card is a div with nested divs and <a>-tags/links. Not very "designing for the next decade" imo.

I'd like to know:

1. Is the current state considerd more of a "90% done" or rather a "30%ish done"?
2. Is the brand disconnection (HubSpot website and dev docs are green, HubSpot "tool" is red, insights are yellowish) intended? If so, why?
3. Will users have the ability to choose from several themes (like others asked before)?
4. Since the marketplace was just relaunched, wouldn't semantic html tags have been possible? Like <figure>, <summary>...
5. Will there be accessibility features like "high contrast mode" font-size changes etc?
6. Will there be a real dark mode be implemented in the future?

best, 

Anton

[Bob2245]

I love this question. Rather than asking my own I'll just side/upvote with this one. I don't have the background to comment on the technicalities of it all, but here's what I experience when I switch to the new theme: eye strain. 

I can physically feel that the new theme is ...brighter? and a bigger strain on my eyes than the old one. I've tried to figure out why that is, and the only thing I can think of is that the Burgundy on white is harsher on the eyes than the old rgb(51, 71, 91) font color. 

I've tried getting used to it, but it's just too punishing on the eyes so I've switched back for now. I really hope this gets adressed as it's the interface I'm looking at for at least 50% of my working hours.

[lizoh]

Thanks for taking the time to share such detailed feedback, @Anton ! It’s clear you’ve put a lot of care into this and we appreciate it so much. Our intent with the updated look is to create a cleaner, more accessible foundation, while also aligning with our evolving brand identity. One of the main colors in the new brand is the dark magenta color which we aligned most closely with. The dark teal/green is another main color in the palette. As you see more of the new brand come to life, you will see more of the darker magenta applied across the board as it is the analogous color to the HubSpot brand orange. 

What you’re seeing now is more of a first phase than a finished product. This is only the beginning of a longer modernization journey, which includes improvements to accessibility, appearance customization, consistency across brand and product experiences, and adding in intentional moments of delight. We’re already exploring options like dark mode, higher contrast modes, and more flexible themes. Of the issues you listed, is there one that feels most urgent or most important for your day-to-day work?

[Anton]

Hi @lizoh, 

thanks for getting back with some insights. I'd totally love dark mode and more flexible themes.

My biggest concern is the user journey/UX.

I'm in the eco system for quite a day and remember HubSpot from a time when it was mostly grey (before the current/blue/canvas theme).

Please don't get me wrong, evolution is great and I love to see that the HubSpot branding is evolving.

As said, I'm trying to put myself into the position of somebody who might not be as long in the eco system as myself or maybe a first-time user.

I'd be super surprised and confused coming from a "green-ish" website to a red/burgundy app. Sure those are the two new colors, but I'd be quite surprised as I'd expect the app to be similar to the website -> green.

From a pure design psychology perspective the color switch creates an uneccessary dissonance between these two use-cases (at least to me). 

When it comes to issues (which I would call stumbling blocks instead of issues) are the harsh colors currently used.

Like the system colors(red, green, yellow) or the super dark greys(almost black) for font colors and buttons as well as huge amount of white on pages like the "homepage" or something like website-/landing pages view.

p.s.:
I've spend a few hours in Figma creating ideas of how I could imagine it to be more harmonized.

looking forward

best, 
Anton

[lizoh]

Hi again @Anton! Thanks for sharing your perspective so clearly and I really appreciate your detailed feedback on color and UX. This is really impressive and we are all so appreciative that you took the time to share this with us.

Your explorations look very close to a lot of the explorations we did as well—which is exciting to see. Part of the decision to move forward with the dark magenta nav for our product was because the color is analogous to the new HubSpot orange.

The contrast between website and app branding is something we’ll keep reviewing. Your point about the difference between the website and app colors is really helpful. We’ll continue to explore the full flow and a more unified relationship with our websites and product—color is one lever and we will continue to explore that and more. Thanks, again!

[matt_scott]

These are all so good! I love the teal version!
I think having the highlight colour in buttons and borders tags etc is so much better that the use of almost black everywhere

[WMM_Inbound]

I think, overall, giving the user a couple of "themes" or "color combinations"  to choose from ( just live VS code has them) is the best approach, because then everyone can find a look and feel they like, nobody has to accept something they dont like and people with A11y issues can choose what they want. I mean, VS did not loose their brand identity because of these decisions. 

[mgeorgieva]

This makes sense, Andreas, and will be something that we look into! Completely acknowlege the desire for different theme preferences.

[Hayley_Hughes]

Hi @WMM_Inbound! Really appreciate you sharing this. Right now, our focus is on building a strong foundation with a simpler, more accessible design. We’ve heard from several customers that having more theme or color options would make a big difference. We’re already exploring flexibility like dark mode and other appearance settings. If you could choose, what would be your ideal starting theme—something higher contrast, more colorful, or more neutral?

[WMM_Inbound]

More neutral would probably my starting point, but with some colors. For me right now i am struggling most with a "washed out" feeling when it comes to the pages that only have black and white. And then my eyes need to concentrate too much because there are not enough "visual anchors". I am not too focussed on what color they have, more that these anchors are even there.

[SAFRavi]

I don't really have a question, just wanted to throw in a comment that I think the new colour scheme is disgusting and it hurts my eyes and makes things harder to read. The clashing colours (magenta, orange, green, pink) is WILD.

I'm going to hold on to the classic theme as long as humanly possible, and if that's taken away I'm going to code my own Chrome extension to re-colour things to something much less offensive to the senses.

[jcolman]

I appreciate you sharing this. We know the new look is a big shift, and not everyone finds our approach easy on the eyes. The changes were made to improve accessibility and create a clearer visual hierarchy, but we’re still learning. Can you tell me which areas of the product feel the most difficult to read? That will help us focus on the right improvements.

[WMM_Inbound]

Wow, thats some harsh criticism, not sure if that helps the product team though, maybe you can try to be a little bit more constructive? i mean, i have voiced my concerns as well below, but i try to do it in a way that helps the product team understand what it is that i am struggeling with.

[matt_scott]

Firstly the redesign is great! most things have improved,

There are just a couple of things that I feel have lowered the user experience, (mainly down to minimizing background colours) See the screenshot where there are various module field groups, it just looks a bit messy with the lack of any sort of colour

[lizoh]

First if all, thanks so much for the validation @matt_scott! 

In response to your feedback, we reduced background colors to simplify the interface and help your data stand out more. Some customers have told us this cleaner look helps them focus, but we also know it can feel like sections blend together at times. Your screenshot is really helpful for us to see where that balance isn’t working. We do want to ensure that we use colors and even the neutrals intentionally. It would be helpful to know where in your daily workflows would more visual separation between fields help the most?