How to choose label colours in Jira Cloud

Since 2026, Jira Cloud shows labels in colour, but it assigns the colours itself, at random. You can't make blocked red or customer purple, and two labels that mean very different things can end up the same colour. Here is what you can do.

Option 1: card colours by label (company-managed boards only)

Jira can colour a card's left edge with a JQL query. It colours the card, not the label chip, and only on company-managed boards.

1. Open the board, then ⋯ → Board settings → Card colours.
2. Set Colours based on to Queries.
3. Add a row with the query labels = blocked and pick red. Add one row per label.

Limits: a thin stripe only, one colour per card (the first matching query), nothing in the backlog list's label chips or the issue view, and no equivalent on team-managed boards.

Option 2: Tintboard for Jira

Tintboard lets an admin choose the colour of each label once, for everyone:

1. Install Tintboard for Jira from the Atlassian Marketplace (free for up to 10 users).
2. Open Settings → Apps → Tintboard → Label colours, type a label (your site's labels are suggested) and pick a colour from the accessible palette or any hex colour. Tintboard refuses colours that would make the text hard to read.
3. Install the Tintboard browser extension, or let IT install it for everyone.

The chosen colours then appear on boards (company- and team-managed), the backlog, list view, search results and the issue view, in light and dark themes. Card colour rules can also tint whole cards, for example every card labelled blocked.

Why an extension? Marketplace apps run in a sandbox and can't restyle Jira's own pages; the extension applies the admin's colours in each person's browser, and talks only to your own Atlassian site. How Tintboard works.