Only relevant if you run Elementor on a theme that supports it. One pass through these settings and you can forget about them.
Each item below comes with its reason. Without the reason, a checklist like this reads as a list of preferences and gets ignored.
#The checklist
- Turn off Elementor lightbox if your theme has its own
Check the theme's media or gallery settings first. Where the theme ships a viewer, two lightboxes end up bound to the same image and open one on top of the other. Where it does not, Elementor's is doing a job nothing else is doing and can stay on.
- Match the layout width, or leave Elementor's alone
The theme reads its own container width and applies it to Elementor's layout, so the theme's value is the one that wins. If your theme exposes a container width setting and you change it, set the same number in Elementor so the two agree. If you would rather not think about it, change nothing in Elementor and the theme handles it.
- Turn off Global Fonts and Global Colors
Always, on every theme that supports Elementor. Fonts and colors are set by the theme. While the Elementor global layers are on, the site has two sources of truth and they take turns winning.
- Leave CSS Print Method on external files
This is the Elementor default. Do not change it to inline. The reason is below, because it is not obvious.
- Turn off Elementor experimental features
If something strange is happening, this is the first thing to check. Experiments enable alternative implementations of things the theme already does, and two mechanisms in one place conflict.
#Why external CSS files specifically
Some of our themes move between pages without a full reload, using Barba.js or a similar transition layer. The page is swapped in place, and whatever stays in the document keeps living there.
Neither WordPress nor Elementor supports that natively. We built it, we maintain it, and it is sensitive to anything that assumes a full page load, which is why this one setting gets a section of its own.
Styles attached as a file survive the transition correctly. Styles written into the page itself travel with the page: the next page arrives with its own set, the previous one does not go anywhere, and you end up with a mixture of two. On a theme without page transitions the setting matters much less, and there is still no reason to change it.
#How far Elementor is meant to go here
Elementor is a content builder in our themes. It assembles the body of a page, and that is the job it is supported for.
It is not how we build headers, footers, archives or templates, and we do not design around a site being edited end to end in it. Those parts come from the theme, from the block editor, and from the theme's own settings, which is where they stay under our maintenance and our performance budget.
That is a deliberate position rather than an oversight. Sites built entirely in a page builder accumulate markup and CSS nobody can account for later, they are slower for reasons that are hard to trace, and they are hard to support because the theme can no longer tell you where a given rule came from. We prefer the native route and keep Elementor to the part it is genuinely good at.
So if you are choosing, the answer is that Elementor is optional on every theme that supports it. Where it is supported it is a real option for page content, and everything above the page is the theme's.
#The rule behind all five
Every item on the list comes down to one principle: the theme sets the global appearance, Elementor assembles the content of a page.
Once you hold that, the checklist stops being arbitrary. Each setting is a place where Elementor would otherwise try to own something the theme already owns.
#Where responsibility sits
Elementor is a third party plugin rather than one of our integrations, so what it does on your site is yours to own. The checklist above exists to keep the two out of each other's way, not to make its behavior ours. The formal version of that line is in our support policy.
#Common questions
Will turning off Global Colors break my existing pages?
Elements that were explicitly assigned a global color revert to the theme's color, so it is worth walking the pages you built in Elementor after making the change rather than assuming nothing moved.
Do I need Elementor at all?
No. It is optional everywhere it is supported. Check your theme's documentation for what it is meant to be used for there, because that varies by theme.
Do I need Elementor Pro?
Not for anything the theme provides, since Elementor Pro adds its own features and is a separate decision from this one.
Can I build my header and footer in Elementor?
Not in a way we support. Headers, footers and templates come from the theme, and rebuilding them in a page builder puts them outside what the theme's settings, its updates and its support can reach. If a theme offers its own header or footer builder, that is the one to use.
I already set a width in Elementor. What now?
Either clear it and let the theme's value apply, or set your theme's container width to the same number. Then check a page that looked correct before, because it was correct against the old value and will have shifted.
Are there Elementor settings the theme requires?
Flexbox containers should be on, because the theme is built on them and the older section based layouts behave differently.
Something still looks wrong after all five
The remaining causes are almost always caching or editing the wrong layer, in that order: a page cache serving the old CSS, or a value set in Elementor for something the theme owns. The settings will not save article walks both of those down.
#Still stuck
Open a support ticket and say what you tried and where it stopped. Your product, your domain, a screenshot and the exact message you saw are usually enough to settle it in one reply.
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