How to Change iPhone Colour: Display, Themes, and Physical Options Explained
Your iPhone's colour experience isn't fixed — but what "changing colour" actually means depends on which layer you're talking about. There's the physical colour of the device itself, the display colour settings, and the visual appearance of the interface. Each works differently, and the options available to you shift depending on your iPhone model and iOS version.
What Does "Changing iPhone Colour" Actually Mean?
This question covers three distinct things:
- Display colour adjustments — how colours render on screen
- Accessibility colour filters and modes — system-level visual changes
- Physical device colour — the actual casing of the phone
Understanding which one you're after shapes everything else.
Changing Display Colours Through iOS Settings 🎨
iOS offers several built-in tools that meaningfully alter how colour appears on your screen.
True Tone and Night Shift
True Tone automatically adjusts the white balance and colour temperature of your display to match the ambient light around you. The result is a warmer or cooler screen depending on your environment. You'll find it under Settings > Display & Brightness.
Night Shift shifts the display toward warmer, yellow tones on a schedule — typically in the evening. It's designed to reduce blue light exposure. Same location in Settings.
Neither of these changes colours dramatically, but they do affect the overall warmth and tone of everything you see.
Display & Text Size — Colour Filters
For more significant colour changes, go to:
Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Colour Filters
Here you can enable a range of filters:
| Filter Option | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Greyscale | Removes all colour — full black and white display |
| Red/Green Filter | Assists with deuteranopia colour blindness |
| Green/Red Filter | Assists with protanopia colour blindness |
| Blue/Yellow Filter | Assists with tritanopia colour blindness |
| Colour Tint | Applies a custom single-colour overlay to the whole display |
The Colour Tint option is the most flexible for general users — you can drag a slider to control intensity and hue, effectively washing the screen in any colour you choose.
Invert Colours
Also under Accessibility > Display & Text Size, you'll find two invert options:
- Smart Invert — reverses most interface colours but leaves images, video, and some apps untouched
- Classic Invert — inverts everything, including photos and media
Smart Invert functions as a rough dark mode for apps that don't natively support one.
Dark Mode
Dark Mode (Settings > Display & Brightness) switches the system UI, Apple apps, and many third-party apps to a dark background with light text. It doesn't change colour per se, but dramatically alters the visual feel of the interface. Many users find it easier on the eyes in low-light environments.
Changing the iPhone Interface Appearance 🖥️
Beyond colour filters, you have limited but real options for reshaping how the interface looks.
Wallpaper and Home Screen
Settings > Wallpaper lets you set custom backgrounds for the Home Screen and Lock Screen. iOS 16 and later introduced much more flexible Lock Screen customisation, including colour-tinted wallpapers, customisable fonts, and widgets. The overall "colour feel" of your iPhone's Home Screen is heavily influenced by what wallpaper you choose.
App Icons
iOS doesn't natively allow icon colour changes without Shortcuts. Using the Shortcuts app, you can create a custom icon for any app using any image — including custom-coloured icons downloaded from the web or created yourself. This is a workaround rather than a built-in feature, and it adds a small extra tap to open apps.
Third-party icon packs are widely available, but they all rely on this same Shortcuts method on unmodified iPhones.
Focus Modes and Home Screen Pages
Different Focus modes (Settings > Focus) can show different Home Screen pages, which means you can set up pages with distinct colour-themed wallpapers and icon arrangements that activate automatically in different contexts.
Physical Colour: What You Can Actually Change
The physical casing of your iPhone comes in the colour Apple chose when it was manufactured. You cannot change the hardware colour without either:
- Replacing the casing — professional repair shops and third-party services offer iPhone housing replacements in various colours, but this voids your warranty, affects water resistance ratings, and varies significantly in quality depending on who does it
- Using a case — the most practical option for most people; a case completely changes the exterior colour and feel of the device
Cases range from thin clear options that show the original colour, to fully opaque designs in hundreds of colours and finishes. Skins and wraps are another option — thin adhesive films that cover the back and sides without adding much bulk.
The Variables That Determine Your Options
How much you can change depends on several factors:
- iOS version — Lock Screen customisation requires iOS 16+; some Accessibility features have expanded in newer releases
- iPhone model — Older models may lack True Tone displays; ProMotion and colour accuracy varies by generation
- Whether your device is modified — Jailbroken iPhones have access to deeper theme engines, but at significant security and stability cost
- Technical comfort level — The Shortcuts icon method works but requires setup; Accessibility filters are much simpler
A user who wants a quick visual shift will get what they need from Dark Mode or a Colour Tint filter in a few taps. Someone who wants a fully custom-coloured interface with matching icons is looking at considerably more time and a few trade-offs. And someone who wants a different physical colour is really making a hardware decision, not a software one.
What's right depends entirely on which layer — display, interface, or hardware — you're actually trying to change, and how much friction you're willing to accept to get there.