How to Add Color Swatches in Shopify Empire Theme

Empire's color swatches can be set up using category metafields — a more scalable approach than assigning colors one product at a time when you're managing a large catalog.

Steps

1. In your Shopify admin, set up a metafield definition for your color option under Settings > Custom data > Products (or the relevant category), if one doesn't already exist.
2. Assign the actual color or swatch image value to each product through that metafield.
3. In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes and click Customize on Empire.
4. Open a product page and select the Product information section, then set the color option's display style to Swatch.
5. Click Save.

The metafield-based approach is what makes this practical at scale — for a smaller catalog, assigning swatches directly to individual variant values also works, but metafields save real time once you're managing hundreds of SKUs sharing the same color palette.