# GNOME Clearlooks (GNOME Clearlooks)

> GNOME 2.12's standard theme made GTK applications friendly and simple through pale-gray windows, blue selection, restrained gloss and firm boundaries.

- IndexStyle No.582 — https://indexstyle.org/styles/gnome-clearlooks
- Kind: Style · Family: Platform Screen Languages · Era: 2005–2011
- Mood: Intimacy, Trust, Calm
- 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

- Pale-gray surfaces with blue selection bars
- A quiet highlight only along button tops
- Tabs and fields with restrained rounding
- Small GNOME icons and a concise two-level hierarchy

## Best used for

- Aligning document, file and settings applications into one calm GTK environment
- Recreating a 2000s Linux desktop without loud brand color

## Composition recipe

- Typography & lettering: Use a small system sans and create hierarchy through label weight rather than added decoration.
- Layout & structure: Stack menu, toolbar, work area and status bar shallowly, without ornamental regions.
- Material & texture: Use one blue selection color over pale gray, a slight top highlight and one fine dark outer edge.

## Colour

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

- Ground: #F2F1EF
- The colour it is remembered by: #729FCF
- Text and outlines: #2E3436

## What to avoid

Old GTK widgets alone are not Clearlooks. State and hierarchy must be unified as a simple, friendly default surface.

## Application checklist

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

- [ ] Visible in the piece: Pale-gray surfaces with blue selection bars
- [ ] Visible in the piece: A quiet highlight only along button tops
- [ ] Visible in the piece: Tabs and fields with restrained rounding
- [ ] Visible in the piece: Small GNOME icons and a concise two-level hierarchy
- [ ] The layout follows: Stack menu, toolbar, work area and status bar shallowly, without ornamental regions.
- [ ] The lettering follows: Use a small system sans and create hierarchy through label weight rather than added decoration.
- [ ] The material and surface follow: Use one blue selection color over pale gray, a slight top highlight and one fine dark outer edge.
- [ ] The colour relation holds: #F2F1EF as ground, #729FCF carrying the style, #2E3436 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
- **KDE Oxygen (KDE Oxygen)** — Oxygen unified KDE 4 applications, workspace and icons through clear blue, soft gray, fine outlines and icons that seem to rest on a shared shelf, bringing lightness to an information-dense desktop. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/kde-oxygen

## 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=gnome-clearlooks+adwaita

## Further study

- GNOME 2.12 Clearlooks
- GTK 2 theme engines
- GNOME Human Interface Guidelines

## Reference works

- GNOME 2.12 Release Notes — ClearLooks standard theme — https://release.gnome.org/2-12/

## AI interpretation

An AI-generated interpretation image exists for browsing convenience only — it is not a reference work: https://indexstyle.org/ai/gnome-clearlooks.jpg

## Source of record

- GNOME 2.12 Release Notes — ClearLooks standard theme — https://release.gnome.org/2-12/

## Machine surfaces

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