Can I style a Google Map?

Question

How much control do I have regarding the styling of a google map?

Can I make it more closely resemble a site's colour scheme or are we stuck with pastels?

Answer 1

Controls

There is a decent description of the process to override the set of builtin Controls. So you have total control over the UI elements overlaying the map.

Map Tiles

I don't agree with the previous answers that you are out of luck if you want to change the images in the map itself.

The range of map types available give you a few options outside the pastel default map:

G_NORMAL_MAP, G_SATELLITE_MAP, G_HYBRID_MAP, G_PHYSICAL_MAP, G_MAPMAKER_NORMAL_MAP,
G_MAPMAKER_HYBRID_MAP, G_SATELLITE_3D_MAP, G_DEFAULT_MAP_TYPES, G_MAPMAKER_MAP_TYPES 

Obviously, this only works if you are willing to create the tiles, but Custom Tilesets are quite well supported by the Google Maps API and there a few good examples out there:

• World of Warcraft tileset
• Batmud tileset
• Tower of the Hand tilset

Update

Google recently announced support for Styled Maps in the Google Maps API. You can extensively customize the color scheme used by Google Maps. So you can customize the look of your mashup, without resorting to custom tilesets.

Answer 2

You can probably change around all the controls, perhaps by making your own or subclassing the google default versions. You won't be able to change the colors on the map itself without generating all new map images, at which point you are probably better off using something other than google. If thats what you want, you should consider OpenStreetMaps.

Answer 3

I've looked into this before. From what I've found is that the styles of layers/overlays on the map are pretty much determined by Google (minus a few size option for some overlays). What I have found is that you'll either need to subclass the existing overlays or create entirely new overlays that mimic the existing functionality, which in some cases can be painful given their complexity (such as street view and others).

Answer 4

Last I checked, you were stuck with the colors you were given (this was a year ago). You can check http://code.google.com/apis/maps/ for more info.