Verdant Ledger Light

A calm, low-glare light theme for Visual Studio Code. Soft green-tinted surfaces, deep evergreen text, and a small set of muted accents keep code legible through long editing sessions without a crowd of competing colors.

Website: nelvaron.github.io/vscode-verdant-ledger

Highlights

• Calm by design. Most code is deep evergreen and gray-green. Color is reserved for what carries meaning: ochre for keywords, forest green for strings, slate blue for types.
• Readable for everyone. Syntax colors and interface text meet WCAG AA contrast (4.5:1). The error red is darker than the warning ochre so the two stay distinct with red-green color blindness.
• Complete. Covers the editor, sidebars, diff and merge views, debugging, testing, notebooks, Source Control graph, chat, and all 16 terminal colors, so VS Code's default blues never show through.
• Semantic highlighting. Language servers such as TypeScript and Pylance refine the colors: declarations are bold, deprecated symbols are struck through, and this and self stand out.
• Checked automatically. Every change is validated for contrast, palette use, and color keys that VS Code knows.

Install

1. Open the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X, or Cmd+Shift+X on macOS).
2. Search for Verdant Ledger Light and select Install.
3. Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P), run Preferences: Color Theme, and choose Verdant Ledger Light.

The theme is also available on Open VSX for VSCodium, Cursor, Windsurf, Gitpod, and other editors that use it.

A matching browser theme for Chrome, Edge, and other Chromium browsers is in the Chrome Web Store (source).

Color palette

Color	Name	Used for
#1b2320	Deep evergreen	Text, variables, functions
#5d6864	Evergreen gray	Secondary text, parameters, JSON and YAML keys, operators
#66716d	Muted gray-green	Comments, punctuation, line numbers
#2d6a3b	Forest green	Accent, strings, markup tags, success
#8a6408	Accessible ochre	Keywords, numbers, attributes, warnings
#b8860b	Warm ochre	Larger indicators: modified files, warning badges
#3d5f7a	Slate blue	Types, classes, interfaces, information
#367878	Muted teal	Second bracket level, graphs
#6a3b5f	Plum	Third bracket level, graphs
#8a2621	Deep brick red	Errors and deleted content
#cfd6d2	Border gray-green	Borders and separators
#eef2ef	Pale surface	Sidebars, tabs, status bar
#f6f8f6	Near-white surface	Editor, panel, and terminal background
#ffffff	White	Menus, suggestions, inputs, and other floating widgets

DESIGN.md explains the roles in detail and lists the derived tints used for selections, hovers, and the terminal colors.

Syntax colors

Syntax role	Color treatment
Comments	Muted gray-green, italic
Keywords and control flow	Accessible ochre
Word operators (new, typeof, and, in)	Accessible ochre
Symbolic operators (=, =>, +, &&)	Evergreen gray
Strings	Forest green
Numbers, booleans, constants	Accessible ochre
Types, classes, interfaces, built-in types	Slate blue
Function and method declarations	Deep evergreen, bold
Function calls and variables	Deep evergreen
Parameters	Evergreen gray, italic
this, self, super, cls	Accessible ochre, italic
Decorators	Accessible ochre
Markup tags (HTML, XML, JSX) and CSS selectors	Forest green
Attribute names	Accessible ochre
JSON and YAML keys	Evergreen gray
Punctuation	Muted gray-green
Bracket pairs (levels 1–3)	Accessible ochre, muted teal, plum
Markdown headings	Forest green, bold
Markdown inline code	Accessible ochre
Markdown quotes	Evergreen gray, italic
Deprecated symbols	Strikethrough
Inserted and deleted diff lines	Forest green and deep brick red

Accessibility

• Syntax colors reach at least 4.5:1 on the editor background and on the current line, and at least 3.5:1 while a selection, find match, or diff highlight sits behind them.
• Interface text reaches 4.5:1. Input, dropdown, and checkbox borders, icons, and indicators reach 3:1.
• Selected, hovered, and keyboard-focused list items look different, and keyboard focus is also shown with an outline.
• The current find match has an outline as well as a fill.
• Normal terminal colors reach 7:1 and bright ones 4.5:1, so each bright color is clearly lighter than its normal pair; only "bright white", the lightest gray, is paler (3:1). See Bright white in the terminal.
• Errors, warnings, and additions differ in lightness as well as hue, so they remain distinguishable with deuteranopia and protanopia. So do the three bracket levels and the Source Control graph lanes.

ACCESSIBILITY.md lists what is tested, the known barriers, and how to report a new one.

Turn off italics

Comments, parameters, and this/self are italic. If your font has no true italic, or you find italics harder to read, add this to your user settings:

"editor.tokenColorCustomizations": {
  "[Verdant Ledger Light]": {
    "textMateRules": [
      {
        "scope": [
          "comment",
          "punctuation.definition.comment",
          "variable.parameter",
          "variable.language",
          "markup.quote"
        ],
        "settings": { "fontStyle": "" }
      }
    ]
  }
},
"editor.semanticTokenColorCustomizations": {
  "[Verdant Ledger Light]": {
    "rules": {
      "parameter": { "italic": false },
      "selfParameter": { "italic": false },
      "clsParameter": { "italic": false }
    }
  }
}

Bright white in the terminal

VS Code darkens terminal text that has less than 4.5:1 contrast (terminal.integrated.minimumContrastRatio). Bright white is intentionally paler, at 3.35:1, so with the default setting VS Code draws it at about 4.5:1, close to white and bright black. To see the theme's bright white, lower the setting:

"terminal.integrated.minimumContrastRatio": 1

The setting applies to all terminal text, so VS Code then no longer raises the contrast of colors that programs choose for themselves. The theme's own colors need no adjustment: every other one reaches 4.5:1.

Language support

The theme colors any language that VS Code or an extension provides a grammar for. It has been checked with TypeScript, JavaScript, JSX, Python, HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, JSON, YAML, TOML, SQL, Markdown, Nunjucks, LaTeX, shell, EditorConfig, Git config, and Git diffs. YAML, Nunjucks, and LaTeX need a language extension such as YAML by Red Hat or LaTeX Workshop.

Contributing

Bug reports and suggestions are welcome in the issue tracker. CONTRIBUTING.md explains how to preview, validate, and package the theme.

License

MIT