Solarized is a
color scheme for
code editors and
terminal emulators created by Ethan Schoonover. The scheme is available in a light and a
dark mode. 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
code editor and could not find a
color scheme 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, 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 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.
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
Vim means enthusiasm and vigor. It may also refer to:
* Vim (cleaning product)
* Vim Comedy Company, a movie studio
* Vim Records
* Vimentin, a protein
* "Vim", a song by Machine Head on the album ''Through the Ashes of Empires''
* Vim (text ed ...
as his editor inside of a
terminal, 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, Solarized was designed in the
CIELAB color space, with
sRGB
sRGB is a standard RGB (red, green, blue) color space that HP and Microsoft created cooperatively in 1996 to use on monitors, printers, and the World Wide Web. It was subsequently standardized by the International Electrotechnical Commission ( ...
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 and
Haskell 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 who re ...
, and blue representing how he imagines drowning in the ocean to be like because of his
thalassophobia. Schoonover expressed concern that
ports 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
Palette may refer to:
* Cosmetic palette, an archaeological form
* Palette, another name for a color scheme
* Palette (painting), a wooden board used for mixing colors for a painting
** Palette knife, an implement for painting
* Palette (company), ...
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 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 known as asthenopia (from Greek ''a-sthen-opia'', grc, ἀσθενωπία, ), is a common eye condition that manifests through non-specific symptoms such as fatigue, pain in or around the eyes, blurred vision, headache, and ...
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 space (as opposed to CIELAB).
Gallery
Solarized Light Xcode 4 Theme (5592863390).png, A port of Solarized Light being used in the syntax highlighting of Objective-C 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's weekly technology newsletter
Paris Metro map complete.svg, Solarized Dark used in a geographically accurate Paris Métro map
Screenshot of Wikipedia in Vector skin, with JPxG's Solarized CSS.png, A slightly modified version of Solarized Dark in a custom Wikipedia skin
See also
*
Helmholtz–Kohlrausch effect
Notes
References
External links
* {{Official website
Color schemes
Software using the MIT license
2011 software