Set the Colors on Your Flight Display

Set the Colors on Your Flight Display

This article explains where the colors of your flight display are set, which of them actually change something on screen, and how long it takes before a change shows up in the lobby. There is no "Branding" page in the portal; colors live in three different places depending on how far the change should reach.

The three places colors come from

The setup wizard sets one primary and one secondary color for the whole hotel account. You will find it under Portal → Setup, step Colors.

The display editor sets the look of a single screen. Open Displays, click the screen you want, and go to the Appearance tab. There you pick a display template, which is a complete palette rather than two colors, and on Premium you can override individual colors from that palette.

The organization panel sets defaults for every property in a group. It is at Organization → Branding, and it is only visible to organization owners.

These three layers combine in a fixed order. The template of a display provides the base palette. Your hotel-wide primary and secondary colors then replace the template's primary and secondary — but only if you have actually changed them. As long as they still hold the shipped defaults of #1E40AF and #3B82F6, the template's own values stay in place. That is why switching a display to a green template can look like nothing happened if your hotel primary is set to a strong blue: the hotel color is winning, exactly as intended.

Setting the hotel-wide colors

Step Colors of the setup wizard shows two fields, Primary Color and Secondary Color. Each has a color swatch you can click to open your browser's color picker, and a text field next to it that holds the hex value. The text field applies as you type, so there is nothing to confirm and no separate apply button; the preview panel underneath repaints while you edit. You move on with the wizard's own Continue or Finish button, which is what saves the value.

Nothing in the product checks the format of what you type. The value is passed through to the database unvalidated, so a typo such as a missing # or a five-character code is stored happily and simply fails to render as a color on the screen. The preview panel is your check: if it does not change, the value is not a color the browser understands.

Choosing a template for a single display

Under Displays → your display → Appearance, the Display Template section offers eight finished designs. Each one carries a full palette — background gradient, text, status colors, borders — not just two accents, which is why a template usually gets you closer to a coherent look than adjusting two colors ever did.

Templates above your plan appear with a lock and a tier badge and cannot be selected. Picking a template only stages the change; the Save Template button below the grid writes it, and it stays disabled until you have actually changed something.

Overriding individual colors on Premium

On a Premium plan, the Color Customization section under the template grid expands into single fields for every color in the palette: Background Start and Background End, Primary Color and Secondary Color, Text Color and Muted Text, the four status colors On Time Status, Delayed Status, Cancelled Status and Boarding Status, and the structural colors Border Color, Header Background, Footer Background and Row Hover.

Because the background is drawn as a gradient from Background Start to Background End, setting both to the same value is how you get a flat background. If the result stops working, Reset to Template Defaults clears every override and returns the display to the untouched template. On plans below Premium the section shows an upgrade note instead of the fields.

What each color actually changes

The primary color is the one that carries the design. It colors the departures and arrivals tab switcher, the header and its gradient, active elements and buttons, and the accents on hotel info slides.

The secondary color currently changes nothing visible on the display. It is stored, it is published to the page as a CSS variable, but no display component reads it, so setting it will not produce hover effects, shadows or a second accent. Set it to something sensible for the future, and judge the result on screen by the primary color and the template palette alone.

Checking the result before you trust it

The live preview sits in the display editor, in the Preview & URL tab of the display you are editing. It renders the real display in a frame and lets you switch between desktop, tablet and mobile proportions, and it includes the display URL and a QR code for setting up the device itself.

The tab is disabled while a display is inactive. That is deliberate: inactive displays make no API calls, which is how they avoid consuming your quota, and a preview would have to break that rule. Activate the display first, then preview it.

Colors also depend on the panel they end up on. Two screens with different calibration, and the same screen in daytime and evening lobby light, will not look alike, so make the final judgment on the actual device rather than on your laptop.

How quickly a change reaches the screen

A running display refetches its configuration every 20 seconds, so a saved color change appears within roughly that window on its own. There is no need to walk to the screen, press F5, or clear a cache.

The five-minute figure you may have seen elsewhere is a different interval: it is how often flight data is refreshed, and it applies to Premium. Basic refreshes flight data every 60 minutes and Pro every 30. Neither interval has anything to do with how fast colors propagate.

If a change still has not shown up after a minute, the screen is most likely not loading at all, rather than showing stale colors.

Organization-wide branding and brand lock

For a hotel group, Organization → Branding is the right place to put the brand color. It holds a default logo and a default primary and secondary color for every property in the organization, and the panel only appears to organization owners.

The brand lock toggle on the same panel decides whether properties may depart from those defaults. With the lock on, the organization's brand wins and per-property and per-display color settings are ignored, which is how a chain keeps twelve lobbies looking like one company. With it off, each property keeps its own colors and the organization values only act as a fallback.

Troubleshooting

The template change did nothing. Your hotel-wide primary or secondary color is set to something other than the shipped defaults, so it is overriding the template's primary and secondary. Either accept that, or set the hotel colors back to #1E40AF and #3B82F6 to let the template speak for itself.

A color was saved but the display ignores it. Check whether the organization has brand lock enabled. When it is on, the organization's colors replace whatever the property set.

A color field has no effect at all. If it is the secondary color, that is expected, as described above. Otherwise check the value itself: nothing validates the format, so an invalid hex code is stored without complaint and simply never renders.

The Preview & URL tab is greyed out. The display is inactive. Activate it in the same editor and the tab becomes available.

Colors do not switch on a schedule. There is no automatic night mode, so a lobby that needs a darker look in the evening has to be switched by hand, or run a dark template all day.

Next steps

Support

If something here does not match what you see, write to info@lobbyflight.com or call +43 650 753 1811. Support is available Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00 CET.