Solarized is a

color scheme In color theory, a color scheme is the choice of colors used in various artistic and design contexts. For example, the "Achromatic" use of a white background with black text is an example of a basic and commonly default color scheme in web de ...

for

code editor A source-code editor is a text editor program designed specifically for editing source code of computer programs. It may be a standalone application or it may be built into an integrated development environment (IDE) or web browser. Source-code ed ...

s and

terminal emulator A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote term ...

s created by Ethan Schoonover. The scheme is available in a light and a

dark mode A light-on-dark color scheme —also called black mode, dark mode, dark theme, night mode, or lights-out (mode)— is a color scheme that uses light-colored text, icons, and graphical user interface elements on a dark background. It is often ...

. Packages that implement the color scheme have been published for many major applications, with some including the scheme pre-installed.

History

Ethan Schoonover—a designer and software developer—began working on Solarized in 2010 after he installed a new

and could not find a

he liked. He found the default white-on-black schemes of most applications to be too high in contrast. Even for low-contrast schemes, some colors were more prominent than others. This was an issue for programming, as code editors use

syntax highlighting Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that are used for programming, scripting, or markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in different colours and fonts according to the category of terms ...

, where color is used to indicate the different parts of the code. Initially, Schoonover attempted to modify the colors of another scheme called Zenburn, but he was daunted by its implementation in

Vim script Vim (;
"Vim is pronounced as one word, like Jim, not vi-ai-em. It's written with a capital, since it's a name, again like Jim."

and did not agree with some of its design decisions. Schoonover took six months in order to research and create Solarized, with the goal of applying "design rigor". Schoonover published Solarized in April 2011 on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continu ...

. Schoonover has refused offers of donations to the project, preferring to not be beholden to others regarding changes, especially since aspects of programming environments such as color schemes can be contentious. Schoonover has considered releasing a revised set of color schemes as "Solarized 2" in order to avoid legacy support issues based on the original Solarized.

Design

Schoonover used Vim as his editor inside of a

terminal Terminal may refer to: Computing Hardware * Terminal (electronics), a device for joining electrical circuits together * Terminal (telecommunication), a device communicating over a line * Computer terminal, a set of primary input and output dev ...

, so he had to be conscious of its color limitations and decided to limit the scheme to 16 colors. He also worked on both a light and dark color scheme early on, with the goal of making them opposites of each other and cohesive. Due to Schoonover's prior experience with photography and

color management In digital imaging systems, color management (or colour management) is the controlled conversion between the color representations of various devices, such as image scanners, digital cameras, monitors, TV screens, film printers, computer printer ...

, Solarized was designed in the

CIELAB color space The CIELAB color space, also referred to as ''L*a*b*'' , is a color space defined by the International Commission on Illumination (abbreviated CIE) in 1976. (Referring to CIELAB as "Lab" without asterisks should be avoided to prevent confusion ...

, with sRGB hex values being generated from canonical CIELAB values. Initially, Schoonover had a goal of creating a build system that would output themes for many different applications, but it proved difficult due to undocumented and complicated formats. Schoonover first worked on

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called ...

and

Haskell Haskell () is a general-purpose, statically-typed, purely functional programming language with type inference and lazy evaluation. Designed for teaching, research and industrial applications, Haskell has pioneered a number of programming lan ...

syntax highlighting to make sure their overall " typographic color" looked consistent. Schoonover had trouble getting the shade of red correct. The use of the colors yellow and blue were personal choices for Schoonover: yellow associated with "pleasant sounds, shapes, and pieces of music" due to minor synesthesia, and blue representing how he imagines drowning in the ocean to be like because of his

thalassophobia Thalassophobia (from Greek , "sea", and , "fear") is the persistent and intense fear of deep bodies of water such as the sea, oceans, pools, or lakes. Though very closely related, thalassophobia should not be confused with aquaphobia which is cl ...

. Schoonover expressed concern that

ports A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as H ...

might use an uneven mix of colors or too many colors. The light and dark schemes have symmetric CIELAB lightness differences in their base colors, preserving perceived contrast. The 16-color palette was also designed to scale down to multiple five-color palettes for design work.

Colors

Reception

Upon release on GitHub, Solarized reached the top percentiles of projects for that week. Joel Falconer of

The Next Web TNW (The Next Web) is a website and annual series of conferences focused on new technology and start-up companies in Europe. The Next Web company was established in 2006 by co-founders Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten and Patrick de Laive in Amsterd ...

recommended Solarized, writing: "I doubt there are many, if any, terminal color schemes that have received the amount of thought and attention that Schoonover's Solarized has." Writing for '' Tidbits'', Steven Aquino tested Solarized Light along with the Cousine font and reported that "as a visually impaired person, I find the combination to be extremely comfortable for my eyes. ... I'm experiencing considerably less eye strain than normal." Selenized, an alternate revision of the Solarized palette made by Jan Warchol, is intended to improve readability and better distinguish close shades (like green–yellow and blue–violet); OKSolar, by Zack Voase, is intended to provide more uniform perceptual brightness by using colors defined in the

OKLab A color appearance model (CAM) is a mathematical model that seeks to describe the perceptual aspects of human color vision, i.e. viewing conditions under which the appearance of a color does not tally with the corresponding physical measurement of ...

space (as opposed to CIELAB).

Gallery

Solarized Light Xcode 4 Theme (5592863390).png, A

port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as H ...

of Solarized Light being used in the

Objective-C Objective-C is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was selected by NeXT for its NeXT ...

source code Solarized Dark Xcode 4 Theme (5592270855).png, The same source code using Solarized Dark Screenshot 20160627 150517.png, Solarized Dark used to style ncmpcpp, an MPD client running in the terminal Tech news process - Overview.svg, Solarized Light used in a diagram showing the process used to write

Wikimedia The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best know ...

's weekly technology newsletter Paris Metro map complete.svg, Solarized Dark used in a geographically accurate

Paris Métro The Paris Métro (french: Métro de Paris ; short for Métropolitain ) is a rapid transit system in the Paris metropolitan area, France. A symbol of the city, it is known for its density within the capital's territorial limits, uniform architec ...

map Screenshot of Wikipedia in Vector skin, with JPxG's Solarized CSS.png, A slightly modified version of Solarized Dark in a custom

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

History

Design

Colors

Reception

Gallery

See also

Notes

References

External links