Solarized is a

color scheme In color theory, a color scheme is a combination of 2 or more colors used in aesthetic or practical design. Aesthetic color schemes are used to create style and appeal. Colors that create a harmonious feeling when viewed together are often u ...

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). Features Source-code editor ...

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, better known as dark mode, dark theme or night mode, is a color scheme that uses light-colored text, icons, and graphical user interface elements on a dark background. It is often discussed in terms of computer ...

. 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 is used for programming language, programming, scripting language, scripting, or markup language, markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in differe ...

, 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 () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

. 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 * Computer terminal, a set of primary input and output devices for a computer * Terminal (electronics), a device for joining electrical circuits together ** Battery terminal, electrical contact used to ...

, 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 Color management is the process of ensuring consistent and accurate colors across various devices, such as monitors, printers, and cameras. It involves the use of color profiles, which are standardized descriptions of how colors should be disp ...

, 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. It expresses color as three values: ''L*'' for perceptual lightness and ''a*'' and '' ...

, with

sRGB sRGB (standard RGB) is a colorspace, for use on monitors, printers, and the World Wide Web. It was initially proposed by HP and Microsoft in 1996 and became an official standard of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as IEC 6 ...

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 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 sapph ...

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 pioneered several programming language ...

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 Synesthesia (American English) or synaesthesia (British English) is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People with sy ...

, and blue representing how he imagines drowning in the ocean to be like because of his

thalassophobia Thalassophobia () is the persistent and intense fear of deep bodies of water, such as the ocean, seas, or lakes. Though related, thalassophobia should not be confused with aquaphobia, which is classified as the fear of water itself. Thalassophob ...

. Schoonover expressed concern that

ports Ports collections (or ports trees, or just ports) are the sets of makefiles and Patch (Unix), patches provided by the BSD-based operating systems, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, as a simple method of installing software or creating binary packages. T ...

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

Redesigns

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 color space instead of CIELAB.

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 Eye strain, also medically termed as asthenopia (), is a common eye condition characterized by nonspecific symptom, non-specific symptoms such as fatigue, pain in or around the eyes, blurred vision, headache, and occasional diplopia, double vis ...

than normal."

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 Hamburg, Manch ...

of Solarized Light being used in the

Objective-C Objective-C is a high-level general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style message passing (messaging) to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was ...

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. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, the eighth most visited website ...

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

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

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 free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

History

Design

Colors

Redesigns

Reception

Gallery

See also

Notes

References

External links