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What are the best color themes for text editors?

44
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675
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The Best 1 of 44 OptionsWhy?

44 Options ConsideredPriceLast Updated
Excellent
Tomorrow Theme
Apr 25, 2018
Gruvbox
Apr 24, 2018
Molokai
Apr 24, 2018
Dracula
Apr 24, 2018
Base16 - Eighties Dark
Oct 4, 2017
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Excellent

Tomorrow Theme

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Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Comes in 5 different variants

•••
Comes in 5 different variations: Tomorrow, Tomorrow Night, Tomorrow Eighties, Tomorrow Blue and Tomorrow Night Bright.
Endi Sukaj
Thierry Vandeportaele
Top Pro

Eases visual processing

•••
Different colors within the same color scheme to quickly distinguish the layout (px, %, ..) and other declaration blocks from the colors (background-color; color); that eases the visual processing, thus increases reading speed, while reading CSS.
Paolo
Luke Fender
FroZnShiva
Top Pro

Light & dark themes

•••
Dark theme does a good job of contrasting kvps.
Alexei Drake
Top Pro

There are versions for a lot of applications or it's easy to make your own

•••
There are ready-made packages for Vim, IntelliJ, Emacs, iTerm, etc. If your app isn't supported the website explains clearly what colors are used, so it should be easy to wrap up your own.
thermoplastics
Adriano Resende
Top Con

Doesn't work with Sublime Text 3

•••
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43 Other Options Considered

Gruvbox

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thermoplastics
Boros László
Top Pro

Multiple contrast options

•••
Three different variants are available, each with different contrasts.
Andris Pelcbergs
Дмитрий Плеханов
Top Pro

Have light and dark version

•••
Dark background has brown-yellowish retro colors, light background is yellowish with pastel highlights.
Endi Sukaj
David Jensen
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Made ready for multiple text-editors

•••
Ports for Atom, Sublime, TextMate and Emacs and other text editors are available. For a full list of available ports: https://github.com/morhetz/gruvbox-contrib If you are using a Jetbrains IDE: https://github.com/morhetz/gruvbox-contrib
JM80
paldepind
ExcitedAgrius
Top Pro

Very easy on the eyes

•••
Both the light and dark version have a reddish background for a consistent look when toggling between them.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
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Molokai

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joelthelion
Top Pro

Looks great

•••
Wernight
Top Pro

One of the most common dark themes

•••
Default for Sublime Text, avaialble on IntelliJ products and Eclipse via plug-in. Usually ranked in top 3 of highest downloaded theme for a IDE.
Wernight
Top Pro

Strong enough contrast

•••
Without being fully black on white (which is good on modern already very contrasted screens) it remains pretty dark compared to many alternatives; making it more readable.
joelthelion
Top Pro

Easy to install with Vundle

•••
Cosmo Myzrail Gorynych
Laura Kyle
Enkia
Top Con

That pink...

•••
The pink color is too vibrant if compared with others. It pops out from context and may blend with red errors in some editors.
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Dracula

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Jonathan
tekgruv
Top Pro

Available for many popular editors, terminals, etc.

•••
Sublime, Atom, Vim, iTerm, Terminal.app, Zsh, Slack, TextMate, Emacs, Visual Studio Code/Visual Studio, Xcode and more.
Nahum
Top Pro

Well designed

•••
Endi Sukaj
HelpfulMarduk
Top Pro

Great in lots of languages

•••
Even for Markdown.
yuri
Top Con

Hard on eyes

•••
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Base16 - Eighties Dark

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tggreene
Top Pro

Balanced and simple

•••
Enkia
Top Con

Doesn't appear to support new HTML5 tags

•••

Spacegray

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Necmettin
Top Pro

Balanced contrast

•••
Most color themes have either too much contrast or too low contrast. Spacegray is much better balanced in contrast (see what I did there)
Necmettin
Top Pro

Ported to Sublime Text

•••
fibric
Top Pro

Ported to Atom

•••
David Jensen
Top Con

No port for Jetbrains IntelliJ

•••
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Zenburn

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Carlo Rodríguez
Top Pro

Exceptionally easy for your eyes

•••
Carlo Rodríguez
Top Pro

Low contrast color theme

•••
The low contrast will reduce eyestrain.
Carlo Rodríguez
Top Pro

Ported to a lot of apps and software

•••
Thomas Rutter
Top Con

Quite low in contrast

•••
While the low contrast reduces eye strain, some people may prefer the added legibility of a higher contrast.
See 2 more ProsSee 2 more Pros

One Dark

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Laura Kyle
Cosmo Myzrail Gorynych
Top Pro

Colors are calm and easy to distinguish

•••
Its wide hue range with good saturation/value use make a good enough contrast to skim the code fastly and not too vibrant to kill your eyes.
Cosmo Myzrail Gorynych
Top Pro

Calm blue background

•••
If used with flux, it turns into warm gray during night.
Alberto Barradas
Top Pro

Available for vim

•••
Cosmo Myzrail Gorynych
Top Pro

Includes GUI themes

•••
Laura Kyle
Cosmo Myzrail Gorynych
Top Pro

Available for Atom clones and Sublime

•••
Possibly for others too This theme is a default one for Atom text editor.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
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Solarized Dark

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spacecamel
Top Pro

There are versions for a lot of applications or it's easy to make your own

•••
There are ready-made packages for Vim, IntelliJ, Emacs, iTerm, etc. If your app isn't supported the website explains clearly what colors are used, so it should be easy to wrap up your own.
Jonathan
Josh Waller
Top Pro

It's always easy on the eyes

•••
Even after a long day.
Andris Pelcbergs
Łukasz Maciejewski
Top Pro

It seems that is has been given the most thought

•••
Judging from the description that has been given by the author, it seems that this color scheme has been designed with huge background knowledge about colors and relations between them.
RealisticAequitas
Top Pro

Works well with multiple fonts

•••
Since Solarized has pretty good color separation it's easier to distinguish both thin and bold fonts.
ideasman42
Yaroslav Gorbushin
Top Con

Low contrast

•••
Comments for example, has very low contrast against the background.
Alberto Barradas
Richard de Wit
Top Con

Too much blue

•••
People caring about the color intensity in their screens, will notice that this theme is not useful for night use. If you use software like Flux to dim the blues in your screen this theme loses it's enchant.
RealisticAequitas
Top Con

Vanilla version doesn't work with htop

•••
Half of the usernames in htop have the same color as the background. One has to use a patched version of htop.
See 5 more Pros & ConsSee 5 more Pros & Cons

Solarized Light

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Dmitry Sidorenko
Top Pro

Easy on the eyes

•••
Dmitry Sidorenko
Top Pro

Available for lots of editors, IDE, even terminal emulators

•••
Yaroslav Gorbushin
Top Con

Low contrast

•••
See 1 more ProSee 1 more Pro

Material Color Scheme

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fibric
Top Pro

Theme support for Sublime Text and Atom

•••
Know any negative aspects of this option?

Railscast

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Austin Keeley
Top Pro

Syntax highlighting makes it easy to see block indentations in Ruby code

•••
Obviously Railscast was designed for Ruby. It's easy to see where your code blocks begin and end.
Know any negative aspects of this option?

Monokai

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Calvin Grain
Top Pro

The best color scheme in sublime

•••
Jonathan
Hendrik Elsner
Top Pro

Good contrast

•••
Jack Casey
Top Pro

Easy on the eyes

•••
Jack Casey
Top Pro

Neutral background

•••
Josh Waller
Top Con

The "neon" feel gets old after a while

•••
See 3 more ProsSee 3 more Pros

Ayu

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OJ
Top Pro

Comes in three variants

•••
Comes in three different variations: Ayu Dark, Ayu Light, Ayu Mirage
Know any negative aspects of this option?

Lucario

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Bobby Stiles
Top Pro

Shares a name with a Pokemon

•••
fibric
Top Pro

Multi app support

•••
Editors: -Atom -Brackets -Sublime Text -TextMate -Vim Terminal: -iTerm -Terminal.app
Laura Kyle
TactfulPales
Top Pro

Good contrast and easy on the eyes

•••
Beautiful!
Joshua Kraemer
Top Pro

Distinct colors

•••
Know any negative aspects of this option?
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The vim "desert" colour scheme

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Endi Sukaj
Alberto Barradas
Top Pro

Comes right out of the box with vim

•••
You don't have to create or install new themes, simply type :colorscheme desert.
Know any negative aspects of this option?

Leuven

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Alex
Endi Sukaj
gilch
Top Pro

Helpful for people with astigmatism

•••
People with astigmatism prefer the bright white background since the extra light causes your pupils to contract, which makes your focus sharper.
Mike
Top Pro

Helpful for people with deuteranomaly

•••
Leuven is a high-contrast theme preferring blue hues to red ones which makes it easier for people with deuteranomaly (most common form of red-green blindness) to distinguish different syntactical elements.
Alex
gilch
Top Con

May cause eye strain

•••
People with blue-light sensitivity may prefer a dark theme.
See 1 more ProSee 1 more Pro

Material Theme

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Zack H
Enkia
Top Pro

Improves Sublime Text's user interface

•••
The theme cleans up the interface so that all elements in the UI are easier to find without being distracting. The icons for each file type clearly define what the file is so there's no having to look too closely at file extensions. The color scheme choices (such as Oceanic Next Dark) in parti...
Enkia
Top Pro

Visually appealing

•••
Enkia
Top Pro

Full language support

•••
Damir -
Top Con

No contrast between main view and panels

•••
Makes it hard to distinguish what's what at a glance.
Enkia
Top Con

Developer pushes versions too often

•••
Very little meat in each version. Has been known to dramatically change the color scheme.
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Predawn

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Enkia
Top Pro

Easy on the eyes

•••
fibric
Top Pro

Theme support for Sublime Text and Atom

•••
fibric
Top Pro

Interface and syntax theme for Sublime Text and Atom

•••
Know any negative aspects of this option?
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Monokai Pro

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Honesty_Gnat
Top Pro

Legible even with extreme Flux style color adjustments

•••
Honesty_Gnat
Top Pro

Colors are more harmonic than vanilla Monokai

•••
Honesty_Gnat
Top Pro

Several color variants available

•••
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Beautiful, yet not distracting UI

•••
Honesty_Gnat
Top Pro

Demo version available

•••
Laura Kyle
Nathaniel Blackburn
Top Pro

Icons

•••
Comes with icons that perfectly compliment the theme and its variants.
MerryConand
Top Con

Costs $10

•••
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Soda Light

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Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Light and unobtrusive

•••
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Retina-ready UI

•••
Know any negative aspects of this option?
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675 Community Recommendations

Fabián Heredia Montiel
actionless
Jake D'Cruz (Imagine Infinity)
Greg Hurrell
gilch
Cristian C
Søren Jacobsen
Boros László
Matt Sawyer
Cihat Uysal
Craig Deubler
+504
Request recommendations from the community
Joshua Kraemer
Joshua
Contributor for 8 months
3
Total 
Recs.
645
Total 
Karma
Lucario
Recommended 2 months ago
Color scheme I keep gravitating to.
Pro
 Multi app support
Pro
 Good contrast and easy on the eyes
Pro
 Distinct colors
See full
Sandeep
Sandeep
Contributor for 3 months
3
Total 
Recs.
185
Total 
Karma
Material Theme for Notepad++
Recommended 3 months ago
The theme has a very clean and modern look to it.
Pro
 Improves Notepad++'s user interface
Pro
 It's free
Pro
 Actively developed
Pro
 Based on popular themes
See full
RealisticAequitas
RealisticAequitas
Contributor for 4 months
4
Total 
Recs.
215
Total 
Karma
Solarized Dark
Recommended 4 months ago
Looks nice and does not burden your eyes at all.
Pro
 There are versions for a lot of applications or it's easy to make your own
Con
 Too much blue
Pro
 It's always easy on the eyes
Pro
 Works well with multiple fonts
Con
 Vanilla version doesn't work with htop
See full
Ray
Ray
Contributor for 7 months
344
Total 
Recs.
70K
Total 
Karma
Ayu
Recommended 2 months ago
Very pleasant to my eyes. Been using this color scheme for as long as I can remember, stuck with it through different editors (Sublime, VS Code, vim) even after trying out others.
Pro
 Comes in three variants
See full
Shane Knysh
Shane
Contributor for 2 years
15
Total 
Recs.
1.1K
Total 
Karma
Tone Syntax
Recommended 4 months ago
I love the theme and really love the customization available.
See full
HelpfulMarduk
HelpfulMarduk
Contributor for 5 months
3
Total 
Recs.
95
Total 
Karma
Dracula
Recommended 5 months ago
great in lots languages, even in markdown
Pro
 Great in lots of languages
See full
gilch
gilch
Contributor for 2 years
400
Total 
Recs.
80K
Total 
Karma
Leuven
Recommended 4 days ago
This is my secondary theme for Spacemacs. I usually use Noctilux, but when I need a light theme due to glare (or when switching focus among other light windows), I switch to Leuven. It reminds me of the default themes of the old Java IDEs I used in school, so it feels familiar.
See full
gilch
gilch
Contributor for 2 years
400
Total 
Recs.
80K
Total 
Karma
Wombat
Recommended 4 days ago
I prefer Noctilux, but Wombat has a very similar feel and is more widely available.
See full
gilch
gilch
Contributor for 2 years
400
Total 
Recs.
80K
Total 
Karma
Noctilux
Recommended 4 days ago
This is my primary theme for Spacemacs. It's based on Light Table's default theme. But I did make one tweak: I changed the very-dark gray background to pure black for better contrast.
See full
Currently displaying 9 out of 675 total recommendations.
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