title: Solarized
description: Precision colors for machines and people
author: Ethan Schoonover
tags: test, testing, test123
colors: light yellow
created: 2011 Mar 15
modified: 2011 Apr 16
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 (as well as
uncalibrated/intentionally miscalibrated displays) and in a variety of lighting
conditions.
See the changelog for what's new in the most recent release.
Currently available in formats for (cf screenshots below):
Editors & IDEs
-
Vim by me (the Vim-only portion of Solarized is
available here, for use with
Pathogen, etc.). See also the Vim README.
-
Emacs courtesy of Greg Pfeil
(@sellout)
in the main repo and in a standalone repository
-
IntelliJ IDEA
courtesy of Johan Kaving and
(@flangy)
in the main repo and in a standalone repository
-
NetBeans courtesy of Brian Fenton and
in the main repo and in a standalone repository
-
SeeStyle theme for Coda & SubEthaEdit courtesy of
Justin Hileman
(@bobthecow),
in the main repo and in a
standalone repository
-
TextMate --- NOTE: Dark Theme is work in progress
courtesy of Tom Martin
(@deplorableword)
in the main repo and in a standalone repository
(with key work from Mark Story
and Brian Mathiyakom)
-
TextWrangler & BBEdit courtesy of Rui Carmo
(@taoofmac)
in the main repo and in a standalone repository
-
Visual Studio courtesy of David Thibault
(@leddt)
in the main repo and in a standalone repository
-
Xcode work in progress ports are available for Xcode 3 and Xcode 4
and will be pulled into the main Solarized project soon.
Terminal Emulators
- Xresources / Xdefaults
- iTerm2
- OS X Terminal.app
- Putty courtesy Brant Bobby
and on GitHub
- Xfce terminal courtesy Sasha Gerrand
and on GitHub
Other Applications
- Mutt e-mail client also by me (just the Mutt colorscheme is
available here)
Palettes
- Adobe Photoshop Palette (inc. L*a*b values)
- Apple Color Picker Palettes
- GIMP Palette
Don't see the application you want to use it in? Download the palettes (or pull
the values from the table below) and create your own. Submit it back and I'll
happily note the contribution and include it on this page. See also the
Usage & Development section below for details on the
specific values to be used in different contexts.
Download
Click here to download latest version
Current release is v1.0.0beta2. See the changelog for details on what's
new in this release.
Fresh Code on GitHub
You can also use the following links to access application specific downloads
and git repositories:
-
Canonical Project Page:
Downloads, screenshots and more information are always available from the
project page: http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized
-
Full Git Repository:
The full git repository is at: https://github.com/altercation/solarized
Get it using the following command:
$ git clone git://github.com/altercation/solarized.git
-
Application Specific Repositories:
You can clone repositories specific to many of the application specific
color themes. See links in the list above or select from this list:
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.
Features
-
Selective contrast
On a sunny summer day I love to read a book outside. Not right in the sun;
that's too bright. I'll hunt for a shady spot under a tree. The shaded
paper contrasts with the crisp text nicely. If you were to actually measure
the contrast between the two, you'd find it is much lower than black text
on a white background (or white on black) on your display device of choice.
Black text on white from a computer display is akin to reading a book in
direct sunlight and tires the eye.
Solarized reduces brightness contrast but, unlike many low contrast
colorschemes, retains contrasting hues (based on colorwheel relations)
for syntax highlighting readability.
-
Both sides of the force
I often switch between dark and light modes when editing text and code.
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.
-
16/5 palette modes
Solarized works as a sixteen color palette for compatibility with common
terminal based applications / emulators. In addition, it has been carefully
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.
In every case it retains a strong personality but doesn't overwhelm.
-
Precision, symmetry
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.
See also the Usage & Development section below for
details on the specific values to be used in different contexts.
This makes colorscheme inversion trivial. Here, for instance, is a sass
(scss) snippet that inverts solarized based on the class of the html tag
(e.g. <html class="dark red"> to give a dark background with red accent):
$base03: #002b36;
$base02: #073642;
$base01: #586e75;
$base00: #657b83;
$base0: #839496;
$base1: #93a1a1;
$base2: #eee8d5;
$base3: #fdf6e3;
$yellow: #b58900;
$orange: #cb4b16;
$red: #dc322f;
$magenta: #d33682;
$violet: #6c71c4;
$blue: #268bd2;
$cyan: #2aa198;
$green: #859900;
@mixin rebase($rebase03,$rebase02,$rebase01,$rebase00,$rebase0,$rebase1,$rebase2,$rebase3)
{
background-color:$rebase03;
color:$rebase0;
* { color:$rebase0; }
h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { color:$rebase1; border-color: $rebase0; }
a, a:active, a:visited { color: $rebase1; }
}
@mixin accentize($accent) {
a, a:active, a:visited, code.url { color: $accent; }
h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {color:$accent}
}
/* light is default mode, so pair with general html definition */
html, .light { @include rebase($base3,$base2,$base1,$base0,$base00,$base01,$base02,$base03)}
.dark { @include rebase($base03,$base02,$base01,$base00,$base0,$base1,$base2,$base3)}
html * {
color-profile: sRGB;
rendering-intent: auto;
}
See also the full css stylesheet for this site.
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.
Font Samples
Solarized has been designed to handle fonts of various weights and retain
readability, from the classic Terminus to the beefy Menlo.
Clockwise from upper left: Menlo, Letter Gothic, Terminus, Andale Mono.
Preview all code samples in specific font faces by selecting a link from this
list:
-
DejaVu Sans 18
-
DejaVu Sans 14
-
Letter Gothic 18
-
Letter Gothic 14
-
Andale Mono 14
-
Monaco 14
-
Skyhook Mono 14
-
Terminus 12
-
Terminus 20
Screenshots
Click to view.
Mutt
C (Vim)
Haskell (Vim)
HTML (Vim)
Java (Vim)
Javascript (Vim)
Pandoc Markdown (Vim)
These screen shots show Vim running with my own Pandoc Kit Syntax.
Perl (Vim)
PHP (Vim)
Python (Vim)
Ruby (Vim)
Shell (Vim)
TeX (Vim)
The Values
L*a*b values are canonical (White D65, Reference D50), other values are
matched in sRGB space.
SOLARIZED HEX 16/8 TERMCOL XTERM/HEX L*A*B RGB HSB
--------- ------- ---- ------- ----------- ---------- ----------- -----------
base03 #002b36 8/4 brblack 234 #1c1c1c 15 -12 -12 0 43 54 193 100 21
base02 #073642 0/4 black 235 #262626 20 -12 -12 7 54 66 192 90 26
base01 #586e75 10/7 brgreen 240 #585858 45 -07 -07 88 110 117 194 25 46
base00 #657b83 11/7 bryellow 241 #626262 50 -07 -07 101 123 131 195 23 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 #cb4b16 9/3 brred 166 #d75f00 50 50 55 203 75 22 18 89 80
red #dc322f 1/1 red 160 #d70000 50 65 45 220 50 47 1 79 86
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
Usage & Development
If you are considering developing a port for Solarized, please see also the
developer notes for
information about optional repository structure and readme formats.
Solarized flips between light and dark modes. In each mode, four monotones form
the core values (with an optional fifth for emphasized content).
Thus in the case of a dark background colorscheme, the normal relationship for
background and body text is base03:base0 (please note that body text is
not base00). Note also that in cases where the background and foreground
can be specified as a pair value, text can be highlighted using a combination
of base02:base1. The L*a*b lightness difference between base03:base0 and
base02:base1 is identical by design, resulting in identical readability
against both normal and highlighted backgrounds. An example use case is folded
text in Vim which uses base02 for the background and base1 for the
foreground.
The values in this example are simply inverted in the case of a light
background.
