---
path: docs/layers/styling
title: "Styling"
desc: "Control how your data looks on the map."
date: "Apr 2, 2026"
---

# Styling

GISOwl provides a powerful visual style editor for customizing how layers appear on the map.

## Opening the Style Editor

Click a layer name in the Layers panel, then click the paint brush icon or press `S`. The style editor opens in the right panel.

## Point Styles

- **Simple markers** — Choose color, size, and opacity. Pick from circles, squares, diamonds, or custom SVG icons.
- **Categorized** — Assign a different color or icon per unique value in a column (e.g., one color per building type).
- **Graduated** — Scale marker size or color intensity based on a numeric column (e.g., population, revenue).
- **Heatmap** — Render point density as a smooth color gradient.
- **Cluster** — Group nearby points into clusters with counts.

## Line Styles

Customize stroke color, width, opacity, and dash pattern. Apply graduated color ramps to numeric fields. Use line width to represent magnitude (e.g., traffic volume).

## Polygon Styles

Set fill color, fill opacity, stroke color, and stroke width. Apply categorized or graduated fills. Add pattern fills (hatching, dots) for print-friendly maps.

## Labels

Enable labels per layer. Choose the attribute column to display, font size, color, halo, placement (point, line, polygon centroid), and max zoom visibility.

## Color Ramps

GISOwl includes built-in color ramps (sequential, diverging, qualitative) from ColorBrewer and Viridis families. You can also define custom color stops.

## Saving Styles

Styles are saved with the map automatically. To reuse a style across maps, save it as a style template in your workspace library.

## Next Steps

- [Filters](/docs/layers/filters) — Filter visible features.
- [Formatting](/docs/layers/formatting) — Format attribute display.