Colours & type
Appearance → Editor → Styles. Colour and typography are separate variations, so you can pair any palette with any typeface — 40 combinations, each a couple of clicks.
The palettes
| Variation | Primary | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| Teal | #0f766e |
The default. Online academies, general education |
| Indigo | #4338ca |
Universities, colleges, research institutes |
| Forest | #15803d |
Language schools, environmental and outdoor programmes |
| Slate | #334155 |
Bootcamps, professional and technical training |
| Plum | #9333ea |
Arts, music and creative studios |
| Ember | #c2410c |
Primary schools, kindergartens, children's classes |
| Midnight | #7dd3fc |
Dark by default — technical and evening programmes |
| Graphite | #5eead4 |
Dark by default — neutral and editorial |
Every palette defines the same ten slugs, so changing one restyles the whole site, patterns included. Two of them — Midnight and Graphite — are dark grounds, and set their button text accordingly so a call to action never comes out light-on-light.
Contrast
Every text and control colour in every palette meets WCAG AA on its own
ground, in both the light and the dark scheme. That is measured, not asserted:
the HTML template Academia grew out of used #1eb2a6, which is 2.63:1 on white
and fails as both text and a button ground, so the palette keeps the hue and
darkens it to 5.47:1.
If you change a palette colour yourself, check it. A primary that is too pale
makes a button read as disabled.
The typefaces
| Variation | Headings | Body | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manrope & Inter | Manrope | Inter | The default. Clear and contemporary |
| Fraunces & Inter | Fraunces | Inter | Universities and anything wanting authority |
| Poppins & Nunito | Poppins | Nunito | Schools and children's classes |
| Space Grotesk & Inter | Space Grotesk | Inter | Bootcamps and technical programmes |
| Inter | Inter | Inter | Neutral throughout |
All six families are self-hosted in the theme — no Google Fonts request, no third-party connection. Each is a variable font subset to latin and latin-ext.
Dark mode
The sun/moon button in the header is for your visitors, and their choice is remembered and applied before the page paints, so there is no flash of the wrong scheme.
It lifts your palette rather than replacing it: a Forest site stays green in the dark. The neutrals swap to a dark set and the palette's own colours are lightened just enough to stay legible on it.
Don't want it? Delete the button from the header template part. Its script and stylesheet then never load.
Spacing and type scale
Both are fluid. One value covers a phone and a wide desktop, so there are no breakpoint jumps — a section that is 96px tall on a desktop is 48px on a phone without a media query. The spacing scale has seven steps and the theme uses no value outside it, which is what keeps a course page and a contact page on the same rhythm.