The 10 best custom chat themes I made in Google Messages

2026 is one of the biggest years in recent memory for Google Messages. In addition to the massive redesign that’s likely coming any day now, 2026 also gave us a long-awaited customization feature: chat themes.

Chat themes rolled out to Google Messages in late August, letting you add custom colors and wallpapers to all your conversations. It’s a feature most other messaging apps have had for a while, and finally having it in Google Messages has been a treat.

I’ve been playing with those chat themes since they arrived and have created a few different styles I’m quite happy with. If you’re looking for some inspiration for your own Google Messages chat themes, here are 10 of the best ones I’ve made so far.

Blue texture

We’ll start with some chat themes you can make using the built-in wallpapers included in Google Messages. One of my personal favorites here is this wallpaper of wavy blue lines, which you can find in the Textures wallpapers folder. It’s a really calming wallpaper that spruces up your conversation without making it look too busy.

I paired the wallpaper with the third color theme option, which makes the voice memo button and other accent colors look quite nice and seamless.

Elephant’s Trunk Nebula

As a self-proclaimed space nerd, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that I also really like two of the built-in wallpapers in the Space folder — one of which is a gorgeous photo of the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula. It’s a really gorgeous shot that works extremely well as a chat background.

I think many of the color options work well with this wallpaper, but I chose the default wallpaper-matched color as my personal choice.

Rosette Nebula

My other favorite wallpaper in the Space folder is the one right next to the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula; a stunning shot of the Rosette Nebula. The colors are much warmer, with more oranges and yellows. Between the two, it’s my personal favorite.

Color number six pairs best with this wallpaper, giving your messages a rich orange with yellow accents that really complement the Rosette Nebula. This is a great combo.

Yellow/blue sunset

The last wallpaper recommendation from the built-in options in Google Messages is found in the Sunsets folder; specifically, the second one in the folder. The yellow sun paired with the blue sky and water and swirling white clouds really looks gorgeous.

For this wallpaper, I settled on the third color option to complete the theme; the contrasting blue message bubbles look great against the yellow sun.

Graphite Grooves

My next few wallpapers come from the excellent Backdrops app — the one I used for this particular theme is Graphite Grooves. It’s a really nice subdued option, great if you want to spruce up your chat without it looking too hectic.

The last/ninth color option looks best with the Graphite Grooves wallpaper, giving the entire chat theme a slick, stealthy appearance. It may be a little “boring” for some people, but I think it looks great.

Gradient Hills

Gradient Hills is another Backdrops wallpaper that looks outstanding as a Google Messages background. The dark blue at the bottom transitioning into purple, then pink/orange at the top, is extremely pretty and adds much-needed calm to my conversations.

A blue color would look really nice here, but I think the eighth theme color is the way to go; the shade of pink for messages with the tan accent color is an excellent combo, and one I think a lot of people will love.

Stock Pixel

Another great Backdrops wallpaper is Stock Pixel, and as the name implies, this is the stock wallpaper from the original Pixel and Pixel XL. It’s a great-looking wallpaper, and an especially solid choice if you want to add some Pixel nostalgia to your Google Messages chats. It also just happens to be a really great background.

Any of the bluish colors would go great with this wallpaper, but I actually really like the green one (the fourth color option).

Halftone ’86

We’ll round out the Backdrops-powered chat themes with the Halftone ’86 wallpaper. This one is admittedly a bit busier than I usually prefer for chat wallpapers, but something about it just works for me. Maybe it’s the pixelated effect throughout the wallpaper. Maybe it’s the cool sci-fi space theme. Maybe it’s the blue/purple/red color mashup. Honestly, it’s probably all of the above.

This wallpaper looks best with the eighth color option, where its pink chat bubbles look right at home alongside the other wallpaper colors. The whole thing is incredibly eye-catching, and I think a lot of you will really like this one.

Fall leaves in Michigan

Using a wallpaper app is a great way to build chat themes in Google Messages, but you can also make some great combos with your own photos. That’s what I did with these last two themes, starting with this photo of fall leaves I recently captured while walking a nature trail. Michigan’s trees look absolutely gorgeous right now, so adding that beauty to my Google Messages chats just makes sense.

I chose the sixth color option because the dark orange and yellow chat colors go perfectly with the fall leaves in the wallpaper. I absolutely love how this theme turned out.

Florence Duomo

My final chat theme is built around a photo I took from the top of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. After climbing to the top of the duomo, my partner and I were met with the most breathtaking view of Florence, and the photo I captured is one of my all-time favorites. And, naturally, it makes for a great Google Messages wallpaper.

I stuck with the first color option to keep things simple, and it works really well with the wallpaper, too.

While chat theme customization in Google Messages may not be the most robust or exciting thing on the planet, it’s still an easy way to completely transform how your conversations look. I’ve loved having them on my Android phone, and if you haven’t spent much time with chat themes yet, hopefully this article gave you some inspiration to change that.