When comparing Leuven vs Material Theme, the Slant community recommends Material Theme for most people. In the question“What are the best color themes for text editors?” Material Theme is ranked 17th while Leuven is ranked 22nd. The most important reason people chose Material Theme is:
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 particular work well to distinguish functions, classes, keywords, properties, values, etc. for various languages.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
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.
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 particular work well to distinguish functions, classes, keywords, properties, values, etc. for various languages.
Pro Visually appealing
Pro Full language support
Cons
Con May cause eye strain
People with blue-light sensitivity may prefer a dark theme.
Con No contrast between main view and panels
Makes it hard to distinguish what's what at a glance.
Con Developer pushes versions too often
Very little meat in each version. Has been known to dramatically change the color scheme.