Solarized

Precision colors for machines and people

Solarized is a sixteen color palette (eight monotones, eight accent colors) designed for use with terminal and gui applications. It has several unique properties. I designed this colorscheme with both precise CIELAB lightness relationships and a refined set of hues based on fixed color wheel relationships. It has been tested extensively in real world use on color calibrated displays and in a variety of lighting conditions.

Available in formats for:

• Vim (the Vim-only portion of Solarized is available here, for use with Pathogen, etc.)
• Mutt e-mail client (just the Mutt colorscheme is available here)
• Adobe Photoshop Palette
• GIMP Palette
• Apple Color Picker Palette
• iTerm2
• OS X Terminal.app
• Xresources / Xdefaults

Download

Project Page:

Downloads, screenshots and more information are available from the project page: http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized.

Git repo:

The full git repository is at: https://github.com/altercation/solarized.

Vim only:

The vim-only colorscheme (Pathogen ready) is available at: https://github.com/altercation/vim-colors-solarized.

Mutt only:

The mutt-only variants can be cloned from https://github.com/altercation/mutt-colors-solarized

Note that through the magic of git-subtree these repositories are all kept in sync, so you can pull any of them and get the most up-to-date version.

What

Solarized is a sixteen color palette (eight monotones, eight accent colors) designed for use with terminal and gui applications and has several unique properties. It has been designed with both precise CIELAB lightness relationships and a refined set of hues based on fixed color wheel relationships. It has been tested extensively in real world use on color calibrated displays and in a variety of lighting conditions.

Features

1. Selective contrast

   Solarized reduces brightness based contrast in general. Modern display devices are capable of blasting your retina clean off with max brightness and I found my eyes growing tired using high contrast colorschemes, even with the brightness turned down. Solarized reduces brightness contrast but, unlike many low contrast colorschemes, retains contrasting hues (based on colorwheel relations) for syntax highlighting readability.

2. Dual modes: Dark/Light

   I switch between dark and light modes when editing text even when editing different types of files. Solarized retains the same selective contrast relationships and overall feel when switching between the light and dark background modes. A lot of thought, planning and testing has gone into making both modes feel like part of a unified colorscheme.

3. 16/5 Palette modes

   Solarized works as a sixteen color palette for compatibility with common terminal based applications / emulators. In addition, it has been carefull designed to scale down to a variety of five color palettes (four base monotones plus one accent color) for use in design work such as web design.

4. Personality that doesn't crowd out the room

   Solarized can be used as a pure monotone palette, a five-up monotone+accent colorscheme or in full on sixteen color mode for full syntax highlighting.
   In every case it retains a strong identity but doesn't overwhelm. Like any good supporting actor, it keeps the story moving without chewing up the scenery.

5. Precision

   The monotones have symmetric CIELAB lightness differences, so switching from dark to light mode retains the same perceived contrast in brightness between each value. Each mode is equally readable. The accent colors are based off specific colorwheel relations and subsequently translated to CIELAB to ensure perceptual uniformity in terms of lightness. The hues themselves, as with the monotone *A*B values, have been adjusted within a small range to achieve the most pleasing combination of colors.

Installation

Installation instructions for each version of the colorscheme are included in the subdirectory README files. Note that for Vim (and possibly for Mutt) you may want to clone the specific repository (for instance if you are using Pathogen). See the links at the top of this file.

The colors

SOLARIZED HEX 16/8 TERMCOL XTERM/HEX CIELAB RGB HSB

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base03 #002a32 8/4 brblack 234 #1c1c1c 15 -12 -09 0 42 50 190 100 20 base02 #17353d 0/4 black 235 #262626 20 -10 -09 23 53 61 193 62 24 base01 #586e75 10/7 brgreen 240 #585858 45 -07 -07 88 110 117 194 25 46 base00 #617c82 11/7 bryellow 241 #626262 50 -09 -07 97 124 130 191 25 51 base0 #839496 12/6 brblue 244 #808080 60 -06 -03 131 148 150 186 13 59 base1 #93a1a1 14/4 brcyan 245 #8a8a8a 65 -05 -02 147 161 161 180 9 63 base2 #eee8d5 7/7 white 254 #e4e4e4 92 -00 10 238 232 213 44 11 93 base3 #fdf6e3 15/7 brwhite 230 #ffffd7 97 00 10 253 246 227 44 10 99 yellow #b58900 3/3 yellow 136 #af8700 60 10 65 181 137 0 45 100 71 orange #c45221 9/3 brred 166 #d75f00 50 45 50 196 82 33 18 83 77 red #cd1e1a 1/1 red 124 #af0000 45 65 50 205 30 26 1 87 80 magenta #d33682 5/5 magenta 125 #af005f 50 65 -05 211 54 130 331 74 83 violet #6c71c4 13/5 brmagenta 61 #5f5faf 50 15 -45 108 113 196 237 45 77 blue #268bd2 4/4 blue 33 #0087ff 55 -10 -45 38 139 210 205 82 82 cyan #2aa198 6/6 cyan 37 #00afaf 60 -35 -05 42 161 152 175 74 63 green #859900 2/2 green 64 #5f8700 60 -20 65 133 153 0 68 100 60