A near-black VS Code color theme built on smart saturation — strong color only where it matters for fast reading.
Inspired by Dark+ and Ayu.
Design
Isolum has one rule behind every color decision: saturation is a budget. Strong color goes only where it speeds up reading — types, strings, function calls, control keywords — and everything else stays deliberately neutral so it never competes for attention.
Two consequences you'll notice immediately:
- No italic, no bold. Anywhere. Every semantic distinction is made with color alone, including comments and Markdown emphasis.
- The editor is the darkest surface in the theme, not the lightest. Chrome sits just above it. That inverts the usual dark-mode elevation convention on purpose — you stare at the editor all session and only glance at the chrome.
The surface ramp is a dark graphite: cool enough to have a personality, but neutral enough that large backgrounds don't compete with the blue keyword signal for the same hue.
| Tier | Role | Hex |
|---|---|---|
| content | editor, terminal, gutter, minimap | #0f1113 |
| chrome | sidebar, panel, status bar, tabs | #111315 |
| elevated | widgets, hover, suggest, menus | #1a1c20 |
Floating surfaces are separated by their tier and a 1px border — every shadow token is fully transparent.
Full rationale, the signal hierarchy, per-language rules and the mechanical validation method are in docs/SPEC.md. It is the source-of-truth: any color change has to be justified against it first.
Install
From the Marketplace, search for Isolum. Or from a local .vsix:
code --install-extension isolum-vscode-theme-1.1.1.vsix
Then: Ctrl+Shift+P → Preferences: Color Theme → Isolum.
License
MIT — see LICENSE.