# Breeze (ブリーズ)

> The default visual style KDE introduced with Plasma 5, described in its own announcement as a high contrast, flat theme for the workspace. Graphics assets are simpler and more monochromatic, and layouts lean on typography rather than ornament so elements stay recognisable. Light and dark variants shipped as a matched pair from the beginning.

- IndexStyle No.534 — https://indexstyle.org/styles/breeze
- Kind: Style · Family: Platform Screen Languages · Era: 2014–
- Mood: Technique, Calm, Trust
- What this family collects: Design languages written down for a platform and published, from the vendors that shipped an operating system to the governments that had no reason to hide rules paid for with public money, every one of them recognisable at a glance.

## Defining characteristics

- Flat surfaces with no modelled shading, where edges are carried by contrast alone
- Icons and graphic assets reduced toward monochrome, with a tight colour count
- Type contrast doing the work ornament would otherwise do, so layout reads through text
- The same assets existing as a matched light and dark pair

## Best used for

- Making a Linux desktop application sit naturally inside the default workspace appearance
- Setting the look of an admin interface that has to ship light and dark as a matched pair from day one

## Composition recipe

- Typography & lettering: Let type carry the hierarchy. Open a wide gap in size and weight between heading and body, and never separate them with ornament.
- Layout & structure: Divide regions with space and thin rules rather than stacked frames or shadows. Keep the arrangement plain so visual clutter drops.
- Material & texture: Build on flat fields with no shading or gloss and hold the palette near monochrome. Push contrast hard, then derive light and dark from the same assets.

## Colour

Read off the reference works below, so a direction rather than a fixed palette.

- Ground: #EFF0F1
- The colour it is remembered by: #3DAEE9
- Text and outlines: #232629

## What to avoid

Softening the contrast breaks the premise, because a flat surface has nothing but contrast left to separate one element from the next.

## Application checklist

Work through this before calling a piece an application of this style.

- [ ] Visible in the piece: Flat surfaces with no modelled shading, where edges are carried by contrast alone
- [ ] Visible in the piece: Icons and graphic assets reduced toward monochrome, with a tight colour count
- [ ] Visible in the piece: Type contrast doing the work ornament would otherwise do, so layout reads through text
- [ ] Visible in the piece: The same assets existing as a matched light and dark pair
- [ ] The layout follows: Divide regions with space and thin rules rather than stacked frames or shadows. Keep the arrangement plain so visual clutter drops.
- [ ] The lettering follows: Let type carry the hierarchy. Open a wide gap in size and weight between heading and body, and never separate them with ornament.
- [ ] The material and surface follow: Build on flat fields with no shading or gloss and hold the palette near monochrome. Push contrast hard, then derive light and dark from the same assets.
- [ ] The colour relation holds: #EFF0F1 as ground, #3DAEE9 carrying the style, #232629 for text and outlines
- [ ] At least one reference work below has been studied directly
- [ ] The caution above ("What to avoid") has been addressed

## Related styles

- **Adwaita (アドワイタ)** — Adwaita is the name GNOME gives its default visual style, defined in the project's Human Interface Guidelines. One set of components has to carry a light style, a dark style and a high contrast style, so colour arrives as named variables that switch rather than as fixed values. A header bar crosses the top of every window holding buttons drawn with no background and no border, and interface icons are monochrome symbolics built on a 16 by 16 pixel grid. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/adwaita
- **Flat Design / Vector Minimalism (フラットデザイン / ベクターミニマリズム)** — Reduces information to plain planes and color, portable across screens and media. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/flat-design

## Often mistaken for

- **Adwaita (アドワイタ)** shares enough of the surface to be mistaken for it. Side by side: https://indexstyle.org/compare/adwaita-vs-breeze

## Compose it with something else

The dictionary can put this entry in a structural role and another in an accent role, and report where the two fight: https://indexstyle.org/compose?ids=breeze+adwaita

## Further study

- how the Plasma 5.0 announcement describes Breeze
- the order in which window decorations, then widgets, then icons were brought over to Breeze
- how the same imagery is drawn differently in the light version and the dark one

## Reference works

- Breeze on KDE Plasma 6 (Debian Trixie) — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Debian-trixie-plasma-6-screenshot.png
- Breeze on KDE Plasma 5, light colour scheme (Kubuntu 20.10), 2020 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kubuntu%2020.10%20desktop.png
- Breeze on KDE Plasma 5, application launcher in the dark colour scheme (Kubuntu 21.04), 2021 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kubuntu%2021.04%20Desktop%20en.png

## Source of record

- KDE — New Plasma brings a cleaner interface on top of a new graphics stack (Plasma 5.0 announcement) — https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.0/

## Machine surfaces

- JSON: https://indexstyle.org/api/styles/breeze
- Image-generation prompt (legally clean): https://indexstyle.org/styles/breeze/prompt.txt
- MCP: https://indexstyle.org/mcp (tools: search_styles, get_style, compare_styles, compose_styles, find_related_styles; prompts: image-prompt, apply-style)