Written content is more than just text. It’s about how well it reads and the overall aesthetics. The better you are at creating visual relief and Aha! moments at the right intervals, the longer you keep readers’ attention. This applies to everyone - a potential client who landed on your Notion blog or even you while revising your notes.
While Notion markdown simplifies structuring content, you still need visual elements to make it shine.
The Notion callout block, for example, is perfect for creating a call-to-action section because it adds an emoji and lends a background color to the text, elevating it from the page. This gives its contents more visibility and generates more hyperlink clicks.
Highlighting is another simple and high-impact method to make text stand out. Text with different background colors conveys different information. For example, red conveys process delays, green indicates progress, and orange signals imminent deadlines.
Now that we know the benefits, let’s explore the process of highlighting text in Notion.
Method 1: Writing text in a Notion page before highlighting
1. Write text
We wrote a sample article on Dirty Bulking with Notion AI for demonstration purposes. You can open an existing page to implement highlighting or create a new Notion page and type in content.
2. Click and drag across the text that your want to highlight and click on the ‘A’ icon
Selecting text displays a menu bar with multiple options, as displayed in the below image.
Click on the “A” icon as indicated.
3. Select the highlight color
Notion will display a range of highlight colors to choose from, as displayed in the below image.
The selected text is an alert - it informs readers that Dirty bulking is not for everyone. We will highlight it in red.
4. Click anywhere on the screen to see highlighting in effect
Method 2: Writing highlighted text from the get go
The previous method works well if you plan to highlight text while editing content. It’s the only method to only a phrase of text within a block. This method works well if you want to highlight a whole block of text. It’s also effective if you know before-hand what you want to highlight.
Let’s continue with the same example as the previous section. We will add another line in Green. Here’s how:
1. Type “/background” and click on the highlight color
We will click on “Green background”, as indicated in the below image.
2. Write text
Start writing text, it will appear with a green background, as demonstrated in the below image.
While highlighting text is beneficial, it's essential not to overdo it. Reserve highlighting for key phrases that demand readers' attention. Being subtle and selective ensures this feature effectively captures your audience's interest.
FAQs
How to change highlight color in Notion?
Highlight the text you want to change the color of, click on the A icon that appears along with the menu bar, and select a new highlight color. If you wish to switch the highlight color, for instance, from yellow to pink, follow this method.
How to highlight a row in Notion?
Select the row of any Notion table by clicking on the six-dots icon that appears towards the left-most cell on hovering over the row. Click on the “Color” option and select a highlight color for the whole row, as demonstrated in the below image.
This will highlight all the cells in a row with your preferred background color.
How to brighten up Notion highlighting colors?
You might find Notion background colors too light, just a bit of dirt on your screen and you can’t tell a green background apart from the default one. That’s bad because the entire purpose of highlighting text in Notion, which is to grab reader’s attention, goes to waste.
You can’t change Notion’s default highlight color until you have a Notion website build with Super. Along with a wider and brighter range of highlight colors, Super provides loads of other design features that make your content look aesthetic and also attracts reader’s attention.
