a 2-minute guide
Pick your colour on withicons.com, download the SVG, then in Canva open Uploads›
SVG
SVGs stay sharp on posters and print. Canva can recolour filled shapes, so the Solid, Gloss, Retro and Pixel styles change colour inside Canva. Outline styles are drawn with strokes, which Canva may not let you recolour, so choose their colour here before you download.
Open the icon library and search for what you need, for example “heart”. Click the icon, choose a colour, then click Download SVG.
In the Canva editor, click Uploads in the left panel, then Upload files, and choose the SVG.
Click the uploaded icon (or drag it onto the page). It appears in the middle of your design.
With the icon selected, click the coloured square in the toolbar at the top and pick any colour, including your Brand Kit colours. This works best with filled styles (Solid, Gloss, Retro, Pixel). For outline styles, choose the colour on withicons.com before you download.
Drag a corner handle to resize. Canva shows pink guide lines to help you line it up.
Select the icon and click the colour square in the top toolbar. Canva recolours filled shapes, so Solid, Gloss, Retro and Pixel icons change colour reliably. Outline styles (Line, Duo, Sketch and others drawn with strokes) may not show a colour square: pick the colour on withicons.com before downloading, and the file comes out in that colour.
Drag a corner. Because it’s an SVG, it stays sharp at any size, even on a printed poster.
Canva only recolours filled shapes in an SVG, and never PNGs. Either use a filled style (Solid, Gloss, Retro or Pixel), or pick the colour on withicons.com and download the icon again in that colour.
Try again, or download a 1024 px PNG in the colour you want and upload that.
Switch to a bold style like Solid, Gloss, Sticker or Retro for eye-catching shapes.
a shortcut
Click Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Grok. We copy a ready brief (“help me add an icon to my Canva project”) that points it to our skill file and this guide, and open it for you. Tell it what the icon is for: it finds the right one, then walks you through adding, recolouring and sizing it.
500 icons, twenty styles, all free.
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