Is there a way to change color mode in Sticky Notes (new) without changing the overall Office Theme?

Hello Marshall, James!

Thank you for posting your question to the Q&A forum. That's an interesting one!

Based on what you described, you’d like Sticky Notes to use a different display mode without affecting the theme used by your Office apps (such as Word or Excel).

You can try the workaround below:

1. In Sticky Notes, set Office Theme to White
2. Open an Office app (e.g., Word): Go to File > Options > General
3. Set Office Theme to Use system setting. This allows Office apps to follow your Windows app mode
4. Go to Settings > Personalization > Colors > choose Custom
   • Windows mode: Light (or Dark)
   • App mode: Dark

Office apps will now follow the system app mode.

Hope this could address your concern!

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Sticky Notes (new) supports its own light/dark color mode that can be set independently from the Windows (system) theme, but not independently from the Office theme setting that is shared across Microsoft 365 apps.

In the current Sticky Notes experience, the per‑app customization that exists is:

• Individual note background color: From any note, select the ellipsis (…) in the upper-right corner and choose a color.
• Sticky Notes light/dark mode: From the Notes list, select Settings, then under Color choose:
  • Light
  • Dark
  • Match Windows mode

The light/dark color mode affects the note background and font colors for Sticky Notes only and can be set to match or differ from the Windows mode. However, Office apps (including Outlook, Word, etc.) share a single Office Theme setting, which applies equally to all Office apps and cannot be set per app. That means Outlook cannot be dark while Word is light, and similarly the Office Theme chosen in one app will apply across the suite.

Therefore, the scenario where Sticky Notes uses a different Office Theme from the rest of the Microsoft 365 apps is not supported. The older behavior that allowed Sticky Notes’ theme to be fully independent from the broader Office Theme is no longer available.

The closest available configuration is:

1. Set Windows to use different modes for Windows UI vs. apps (for example, Windows dark, apps light):
   • Start > Settings > Personalization > Colors.
   • Set Choose your color to Custom.
   • Set Choose your default Windows mode and Choose your default app mode as desired.
2. In Sticky Notes, set Color to Light, Dark, or Match Windows mode depending on which combination works best with the system settings.

But Office apps themselves will still share one Office Theme, and that cannot be overridden per app or per Sticky Notes.

References:

• Get started with Sticky Notes
• Sticky Notes
• Use color and contrast for accessibility in Microsoft 365
• Changing office theme - Microsoft Q&A