Dawn theme filtering customization

Topic summary

Goal: simplify the Dawn theme “color” filter to use generic colors (e.g., Red, Green) instead of numerous product-specific variant names tied to design names.

Initial guidance suggested custom coding (Liquid/JavaScript) to create a separate filter set not bound to variants. However, the shared solution avoided code by using Shopify metafields.

Solution implemented:

  • Create a product metafield (type: text) named “Color.”
  • For each product, fill this metafield with a generic color value (e.g., “Grey”).
  • In Admin > Navigation (filters settings), add the metafield “color” as a storefront filter.

Outcome: the collection filter now surfaces a concise, generic color list rather than variant-specific names, enabling customers to filter by single or multiple generic colors.

Open questions: how to display color swatches instead of the default checkboxes, and a request for a visual example. No responses yet to these follow-ups, so the thread remains partially unresolved.

Summarized with AI on February 3. AI used: gpt-5.

Exactly, my question is how do I do that?