Gutenberg theme.json doesn't seem to work in a Bricks Child site

How To
1

would like to use a theme.json to try and provide some basic text styling for content editors, but it doesn’t seem to work with Bricks. It seems to break Gutenberg entirely, and also some Bricks front-end styles (?).

Screenshot of broken Gutenberg:

Screenshot 2026-01-28 at 10.42.29 PM
Screenshot 2026-01-28 at 10.42.29 PM2316×1992 437 KB

The very basic test theme.json I’m using….

{
    "$schema": "https://schemas.wp.org/wp/6.9/theme.json",
    "version": 3,
    "settings": {
        "color": {
            "palette": [
                {
                    "name": "Black",
                    "slug": "black",
                    "color": "#000000"
                },
                {
                    "name": "White",
                    "slug": "white",
                    "color": "#ffffff"
                }
            ]
        }
    }
}
2

use this plugin to create your child theme

it adds ability to edit the styles and save it as theme

to make your theme as child theme only you need to add this to style.css

Template: bricks

thats how wordpress knows thats a child theme thats it.

image
image651×354 21.1 KB

3

Wow. This looks good. Trying this. Thanks!

4

FWIW though, as a dumb user, it feels like a bug that I can’t just create a partial theme.json and pop it in there, and have it integrate with the normal Wordpress system. theme.json should work in child themes, according to the WP docs. Maybe there’s some technical reason why it can’t work in Bricks? It seems like unexpected behavior. Anyhow, it’s nice that there’s a workaround.

5

Hi Joe,
Thanks for your report! I moved it to the “how to” category, as it is not a bug.

First and foremost, Bricks is not a block theme, but rather a “good old” classic theme. As a result, a theme.json is not expected and is therefore only supported in a very rudimentary way. As far as I know, this also applies to other “classic” themes, since block and classic themes are two different approaches. As far as I can see, there are no immediate plans to change this.

1 Like
6

bricks builder more like a classic php theme then block theme.

it is possible to make site editor support for the bricks child theme but not a good idea!

site editor and bricks builder template hierarchy may conflict and you will have no idea how to even fix it.

i already gave you a good plugin that plugin is made by Core WordPress Developers if you want to learn and make a block theme use that and then convert it to a child theme BUT again you will most likely create conflict if you ever create or touch template hierarchy.

just creating theme.json is not enough to make/add a site editor support btw you need to learn more.

use the plugin and start learning :slight_smile:

7

I’m not meaning to use Bricks as a Blocks theme. I only meant that if I am using WP content inside Bricks (via the Post Content element), because the client wants to use the WP block editor to maintain the text, it would be handy to be able to simply tweak the block editor using the normal Wordpress way (theme.json) to change colors, limit access to certain blocks, whatever… like you normally would with other child themes. It just seems weird that Bricks breaks all the styles unless you supply a full new json, there doesn’t seem to be any reason why you can’t just override the bits you need in the normal way, and leave the defaults untouched. It’s more of an issue of Bricks breaking the block editor styling system a bit.