Question

Why Higcharst default columns are different for piechart and column chart? You can see here: http://jsfiddle.net/RqvU4/ i.e. John has different colors at column and pie? How can I make it same without defining colors by hand?

Answer 1

They are not the same color because highcharts adds different colors for each serie.
You can see default colors here.

You can set color for each serie manually like the following.

{
    type: 'pie',
    name: 'Total consumption',
    data: [{
        name: 'Jane',
        color: '#4572A7',
        y: 13
    }, {
        name: 'John',
        color: '#AA4643',
        y: 23                    
    }, {
        name: 'Joe',
        color: '#89A54E',
        y: 19
    }],
    center: [100, 50],
    size: 100,
    showInLegend: false,
    dataLabels: {
        enabled: false
    }
}

Demo