Solarized

ソラライズド / 2011– / Style / UI Expression

Solarized is a sixteen colour scheme for terminal and GUI applications published by Ethan Schoonover with every value in the open, eight monotones and eight accents. The monotones hold symmetric CIELAB lightness differences, so moving between the light and the dark background keeps the same perceived contrast. It lowers brightness contrast on purpose and lets hue relations, not brightness, separate one token from the next.

Solarized — Xcode 4 with Solarized Light applied, 2011 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 · © Jason Brennan from Ottawa, Canada — Xcode 4 with Solarized Light applied, 2011 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 · CC BY 2.0 · © Jason Brennan from Ottawa, Canada

Solarized — gedit with Solarized Dark applied — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — gedit with Solarized Dark applied — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 · CC0

Solarized — Wikipedia article page with Solarized Dark applied, 2021 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · © JPxG — Wikipedia article page with Solarized Dark applied, 2021 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © JPxG

At a glance

Visual cues

Backgrounds that are neither pure black nor pure white, one leaning teal and one leaning cream
A small lightness gap between body text and ground, softer than black on white
Eight accents at close to equal lightness, told apart by hue alone
The same accent holding the same role after the background is flipped from dark to light

Best used for

Giving an editor or terminal one reading feel across both light and dark backgrounds
Separating elements on a screen someone stares at for hours, without raising contrast

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Dictionary entry

Type: One monospaced face, carrying emphasis in colour rather than in weight or slant.
Composition: Divide regions by shifting the ground one step instead of drawing rules, and leave the ground generous.
Material: Hold to the eight monotones and eight accents, anchoring the ends at #002b36 and #fdf6e3 and taking body text from the middle greys.
Caution: Borrowing only the backgrounds and inventing your own accents breaks the matched CIELAB lightness, and the scheme loses the very mechanism that lets hue do the separating.
Further study: the point that the lightness differences of base03 to base0 and base02 to base1 are designed to the same value / the eight accents being taken from fixed relations on the hue wheel / how far ports to terminals and editors keep the published values

Related entries

Terminal UI (ターミナルUI)Same UI Expression lineage.Compare Solarized and Terminal UI
Material Design (マテリアルデザイン)Shared effects: Trust / Technique.Compare Solarized and Material Design

Cite this entry

The dictionary is meant to be linked to. Take whichever form fits where you are writing.

Link: https://indexstyle.org/styles/solarized
Markdown: [Solarized — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/solarized)
HTML: <a href="https://indexstyle.org/styles/solarized">Solarized — IndexStyle</a>

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