How to make Excel look less like Excel.
Excel looks like Excel for a handful of very specific reasons — the grey grid, the Calibri, the rainbow of colored cells. Remove those signatures and replace them with a few design decisions, and the same file reads like a designed page. Here's exactly how.
To make Excel look less like Excel, turn off the gridlines and headings, replace the default Calibri font and open up the spacing, restrain the palette to one accent color, build on a layout grid with real margins, and use cards and shapes instead of raw cell borders. Excel looks like a spreadsheet because of its defaults — change the defaults and it stops.
Excel has a look. It's the defaults.
When something "looks like Excel," people are reacting to a very particular set of visual cues: a faint grey grid covering the whole page, lettered columns and numbered rows down the edges, Calibri 11 in flat black, cell borders boxing in every range, and a scatter of conditional-formatting greens, reds, and yellows. None of that is the data — it's the chrome the program ships with.
That's the good news. You don't have to leave Excel to make it stop looking like Excel. Almost every signature on that list is a default you can switch off or replace, and most of the changes take seconds. The goal isn't to hide that it's a spreadsheet for the sake of it — it's that the same decisions which remove the "spreadsheet look" also make the file genuinely easier to read.
Below are the eight changes, in roughly the order of impact. Do the first two and the difference is already obvious; do all eight and people stop assuming it was built in Excel at all. This is the core of what Excel design is about, and it's the same approach behind every dashboard example on this site.
From spreadsheet to designed page
Turn off gridlines and headings
This is the single biggest visual change, and it's two checkboxes. On the View tab, uncheck Gridlines and Headings. The faint grey grid and the A/B/C, 1/2/3 rulers are the most recognizable signature of Excel; without them the sheet becomes a blank canvas you can compose on.
Replace Calibri and open up the spacing
Default Calibri 11 in cramped rows is the typographic equivalent of mumbling. Swap it for one cleaner typeface, set a clear size scale, and raise row height so text isn't pinned to the cell edges. Generous spacing is what reads as "designed"; tight default rows read as a raw data dump.
Use a restrained palette — one accent
Color is the third giveaway. A neutral base of one or two greys plus a single accent reserved for what matters will look more deliberate than any rainbow. Two or three colors total is plenty. The default greens, reds, and yellows of conditional formatting are a big part of why a sheet "looks like Excel."
Build on a layout grid with real margins
Designed pages have margins and whitespace; default spreadsheets push everything into the top-left corner. Treat a few narrow columns and rows as gutters and outer margins, then snap every block to the same left and right edges so the sheet reads as one composition.
Use shapes and cards, not cell borders
Thin black cell borders boxing in ranges are pure spreadsheet. Replace them with rounded rectangles and grouped cards laid over the sheet — soft-edged containers with padding and a light fill. The same content inside a card instead of a bordered range immediately looks intentional.
Design KPI cards, not a wall of numbers
A screen of equal-weight cells makes the reader do the work. Turn the figures that matter into metric cards — a big number, a small label, and a tiny trend indicator — so the key results read in a glance. A few well-sized cards communicate faster than a dense table ever will.
Restyle the charts, remove the junk
Default Excel charts are the second-biggest giveaway after gridlines. Strip the styling back: lighten or remove gridlines, drop the heavy border, delete the redundant legend, label series directly, and choose a chart that shows the comparison honestly. A clean chart looks nothing like the default one.
Add a subtle hint of depth
The final touch is restraint. A soft fill, a faint shadow under a card, a handful of simple monochrome icons — just enough to add polish and separate elements. The trick is stopping early; gradients, glows, and heavy 3-D swing straight back into looking like a template gallery.
The five-minute pass
Gridlines & headings off
View tab, uncheck both. The fastest, highest-impact change — do it first on every sheet you'll show someone.
One font, three sizes
Replace Calibri with a single clean typeface and a real size scale, then add row height so it breathes.
One accent color
Neutral base plus a single accent for what matters. Kill the conditional-formatting rainbow.
Margins & a grid
Gutter columns, outer margins, aligned edges. Whitespace is what separates "designed" from "default."
Cards over borders
Rounded rectangles and KPI cards instead of boxed ranges and All Borders.
Clean the charts
Remove chart junk, thin the gridlines, label directly, pick an honest chart type.
What keeps Excel looking like Excel
Don't start from a blank grid
The quickest way to a sheet that doesn't look like Excel is to start from one that already doesn't. Study finished examples to see the eight changes applied, begin from a designed template instead of a default workbook, and read the underlying design principles and the full step-by-step guide to a professional dashboard for the reasoning behind each move.
Dashboard examples
See sheets that look nothing like default Excel, with the ideas behind each.
See examples →Start from a template
Ready-made dashboards and reports — gridlines off, themed, already designed.
Browse templates →What is Excel design?
The discipline behind every change on this page, defined in plain English.
Read →Have Josh do it
Get an existing workbook redesigned, reviewed, or built to a system.
Work with Josh →Excel design techniques
Each change above has its own deep dive. Here's the technique-by-technique breakdown, with the do's, don'ts, and finished examples for every one.
Shapes & cards
Design with rounded rectangles instead of cell borders.
Read →KPI cards
The big-number metric tile, done right.
Read →Color palette
One accent, neutrals, semantic colors.
Read →Fonts & type
Beyond default Calibri 11.
Read →Progress charts
Bars, radial rings, and gauges.
Read →Dashboard layout
A real grid, margins, and whitespace.
Read →Dashboard gallery
20+ native-Excel dashboards for inspiration.
See the gallery →Making Excel look less like Excel, answered
How do I make Excel look less like Excel?
Turn off gridlines and headings on the View tab, replace the default Calibri font and increase row height, restrain the palette to a neutral base plus one accent color, build on a layout grid with real margins, use rounded rectangles and cards instead of raw cell borders, turn key figures into KPI cards, strip the junk from your charts, and add just a hint of depth. Together those changes make a sheet read as a designed page instead of a spreadsheet. What Excel design means →
What is the single biggest change?
Turning off gridlines and headings. The faint grey grid and the A/B/C, 1/2/3 rulers are the most recognizable signature of Excel, and removing them on the View tab instantly turns the sheet into a blank canvas you can design on. It takes two clicks and changes the whole impression of the file.
What font should I use instead of Calibri?
Almost any clean, well-spaced typeface used consistently beats default Calibri at one size everywhere. Pick a single family and set a clear scale — a large size for the headline number, a medium size for headings, and a smaller size for labels. Consistency and a real size hierarchy matter more than which specific font you choose.
Can Excel really look as good as a designed document or BI tool?
Yes. With gridlines off, a real layout grid, restrained color, cards instead of cell borders, and cleaned-up charts, an Excel sheet can look as polished as a designed report or a dedicated BI tool — while staying in the file most teams already use and can edit themselves. See examples →
Is this just decoration?
No. The same changes that make a sheet look less like a spreadsheet also make it easier to read: hierarchy guides the eye, restrained color highlights what matters, and whitespace separates ideas. Looking designed and being clear are the same work — the polish is a side effect of communicating well. The design principles →