Shopify Refresh Theme Customization 2025 (Newbies Guide)

If you’re just getting started with Shopify in 2023 and you want a hands-on, genuinely human walkthrough of how to make your online store st...

If you’re just getting started with Shopify in 2023 and you want a hands-on, genuinely human walkthrough of how to make your online store stand out using one of Shopify’s best free themes—Refresh—then you’re in the right place, because today, I’m going to take you from the very first login all the way through customizing your theme, adding products, tweaking design elements, and even creating your own logo and favicon, so you end up with a shop that looks not just professional but also uniquely yours.

To kick things off, after you log in to Shopify and either open your existing store or create a new one (don’t worry, Shopify walks you through the quick sign-up and validation steps), you’ll land right on your dashboard, which is really your home base for everything store-related; it’s here where you’ll find the “Online Store” option in the menu—click it, and you’ll see the “Themes” section, which is where the fun really begins.

Now, every new Shopify store starts with a default theme (usually Dawn), but we want to use Refresh, so just click “Add Theme,” then “Visit Theme Store,” and once you’re in the theme library, you can either scroll to find Refresh or simply type it in the search bar—when it pops up, you’ll see it’s totally free and packed with features like gorgeous editorial content sections, mega menus, sticky headers, and great support for visual storytelling and brand building, so go ahead and click “Try Theme” to add it to your library.

Once Refresh is in your theme library, it’s not live yet, so you can preview it or get straight into customizing it before you hit “Publish”; by clicking “Customize,” you’ll open the theme editor, which is organized into different sections like headers, footers, homepage, product pages, collection pages, and more, all accessible from the left sidebar, and you’ll see that you can add, remove, and rearrange sections with just a few clicks, making it super easy to shape your site’s structure.

If you want to change colours, fonts, button styles, or layout details, head over to “Theme Settings,” where you’ll find controls for things like logos, typography, colors, button shapes, and content containers, and you can dive deep into the settings for each element—like making buttons thicker, changing their opacity, adjusting content container corners, or even setting the cart style to a drawer, page, or pop-up, all with simple sliders and dropdowns.

When you’re ready to start adding products, click on the “Products” tab in your dashboard, hit “Add Product,” and fill in your product’s title (like “Pink T-shirt”), write a catchy description, upload crisp images, set your price and compare-at price, and fill out the rest of the details like inventory, shipping weight, and whether you want to continue selling when out of stock; don’t forget to save your product, and you can immediately preview how it looks in your store by clicking the preview button.

As you add products, you can go back to the theme editor and see your items show up in real time, and you can play with different product page layouts—try stacked images, two-column or thumbnail carousels, enable image zoom on hover or click, and even add custom CSS if you want extra control over your store’s look (though you don’t have to touch code at all to make things look great).

For a more engaging experience, use the built-in slideshow section on your homepage: you can add multiple images, set how often the slides change, choose between grid or full-width layouts, and even add headings, subheadings, and call-to-action buttons that link to your product or collections pages, giving your visitors an interactive, visually rich welcome the moment they land on your site.

Don’t forget your footer—this is where you’ll want to add contact info, store location, quick links, your mission or brand story, and maybe even a photo or your logo; you can do all of this by adding blocks to the footer section, and you can further enhance your store by exploring app blocks, which are integrations that let you add features like maps, reviews, or other third-party widgets straight into your theme.

Speaking of reviews, Shopify’s own Product Reviews app is a great way to let customers leave star ratings and feedback right on your product pages, and you can add this by going to “Add Apps” in your dashboard, installing the app, and then adding review blocks to your product templates in the theme editor—customizing the look, placement, and even the icon style to fit your brand.

Multi-columns and collapsible content sections are other powerful tools in the Refresh theme, allowing you to create sections with images and text side by side, or add FAQ-style dropdowns to answer common customer questions, showcase product features, or simply organize information in a sleek, user-friendly way.

Once you’re happy with your design, remember to save your changes, publish the Refresh theme to make it live, and preview your site across different pages—products, collections, cart, and checkout—to see how it all comes together; you’ll notice that every edit, every section, and every color tweak makes your store feel more custom and more like “you.”

When it comes to branding, you don’t need expensive software to make a logo—free tools like Canva are perfect for creating a stylish, on-brand logo and favicon; just design your logo, download it (preferably with a transparent background using remove.bg if needed), crop any extra space, and upload it in the theme settings for both the logo and favicon slots, making sure your site looks sharp not only on the homepage but also in browser tabs.

Finally, if you’re on a free Shopify plan, you’ll see “Powered by Shopify” in your footer, but you can remove this by upgrading to a paid plan, which also unlocks more features and integrations for scaling your business; and as you continue to grow, explore the theme’s app integrations, experiment with layouts and sections, and keep your content fresh, engaging, and easy to navigate.

So there you have it—a complete, beginner-friendly journey through customizing the Shopify Refresh theme, from setting up your store and adding products to creating slideshows, reviews, multi-columns, and your own logo, all in a way that’s approachable, creative, and totally doable even if you’ve never built an online store before; if you found this guide helpful, be sure to like, subscribe, and let me know in the comments what you’d like to learn next, and don’t forget to enjoy the process—because building your own Shopify store is as much about creativity and exploration as it is about business.