Godhuli Theme: Warm, Eye-Comfort Dark & Light Theme for VS Code
A warm, low-blue-light VS Code theme for long coding sessions. Godhuli comes in four flavors: a warm dark theme, a deep OLED night theme, a soft low-contrast Mist, and a paper-like light theme. All four are colorblind-safe, borderless and tuned with measured contrast, so your eyes stay relaxed while types, strings and control flow stay easy to see.
Godhuli is the Bengali word for dusk, the "cow-dust hour" when daylight turns warm and the sky still holds its blue. The theme uses that light: a warm umber canvas, cool twilight blues for structure, and warm ember tones for strings and values.
Why Godhuli?
- Easier on your eyes after hours of coding. The background is warm umber-gray, never pure black or harsh white. It has very little blue light, and the UI stays quiet, so you won't want to turn the brightness down at 1 am.
- Code you can read at a glance. Types, functions, strings, keywords and comments each have their own clear role. Control flow (
if, return, await) stands out, and punctuation steps back.
- Colorblind friendly. Checked against protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia simulations. Added and removed lines, and passed and failed tests, differ in brightness, not only red vs. green.
- A modern, borderless workbench. The sidebar, tabs, panel and status bar share one calm surface, and the editor is the brightest part of the screen. There are no distracting divider lines.
- Built on measurements, not guesswork. Every color is contrast-checked with APCA, a candidate contrast method for WCAG 3, including when selections, search matches and diff highlights sit underneath.
Four flavors
| Flavor |
Best for |
Background |
| Godhuli Dark |
The everyday warm dark theme for regular monitors |
#24211F warm umber |
| Godhuli Night |
OLED screens and dark rooms. A deeper canvas with softened text to avoid glow |
#161413 near-black |
| Godhuli Mist |
Tired eyes and very long sessions. The lowest color and softest contrast |
#282624 muted gray |
| Godhuli Light |
Daylight and bright offices. A warm, low-glare paper look |
#F3EEE4 warm paper |
Godhuli Night: OLED dark theme
Godhuli Mist: low contrast, soft theme
Godhuli Light: warm paper light theme
Install
In VS Code:
- Open the Extensions view (
Ctrl+Shift+X / Cmd+Shift+X).
- Search for Godhuli and click Install.
- Open the Command Palette (
Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P), run Preferences: Color Theme, and pick a Godhuli flavor.
Quick Open: press Ctrl+P / Cmd+P and paste:
ext install your-publisher-id.godhuli-theme
Cursor, VSCodium, Windsurf, Gitpod: install Godhuli from Open VSX. It's the same theme.
Coming from another theme?
Godhuli is a good fit if you like…
| If you like |
What feels familiar |
What's different in Godhuli |
| Gruvbox |
Warm, earthy colors for long sessions |
Cleaner, less muddy tones, a cool blue/teal structure, and a borderless modern UI |
| Nord |
Calm, low-noise colors |
A warm canvas instead of cool blue, and types stay clearly visible |
| Tokyo Night |
Atmospheric depth and calm blues |
A warm background with less blue light. Keywords are tuned to stay distinct for colorblind users |
| Everforest / Rosé Pine |
Soft, comfortable, natural palette |
Higher measured legibility for types and strings, plus OLED and low-contrast flavors |
| Solarized / Zenburn |
Low-contrast eye comfort |
Modern semantic highlighting and a fully themed workbench, terminal and diff |
Features
- Full semantic highlighting. Language servers can tell classes, interfaces, enums, parameters, properties, built-ins, deprecated code and more apart.
- Language support tuned token by token:
- JavaScript, TypeScript, React (JSX/TSX), Vue
- Python, Rust, Go, C/C++, C#, Java, PHP/Laravel Blade, SQL
- Shell, HTML, CSS/SCSS/Less, JSON, YAML, TOML, Markdown, Dockerfile, git and log files
- JSX done right. Components look like types, HTML tags look like tags, and attributes are gold.
- Readable diffs and merges. Syntax colors stay visible inside added and removed lines.
- Matching terminal colors. All 16 ANSI colors are tuned for each flavor.
- Calm bracket pair colors: six soft colors, with unmatched brackets flagged as errors.
- Every part of the UI is themed: suggestions, hover, peek, inlay hints, ghost text (AI completions), sticky scroll, notebooks, testing and debugging.
Recommended settings
{
"workbench.colorTheme": "Godhuli Dark",
"editor.semanticHighlighting.enabled": true,
"editor.bracketPairColorization.enabled": true,
"editor.guides.bracketPairs": "active",
"editor.fontFamily": "'JetBrains Mono', 'Fira Code', 'Cascadia Code', monospace",
"editor.fontLigatures": true,
"editor.fontSize": 14,
"editor.lineHeight": 1.6
}
FAQ
Is Godhuli good for eye strain?
It's designed for it. The theme uses warm, low-blue-light backgrounds, avoids pure black and pure white, and keeps contrast high enough to read without being harsh. If your eyes are tired, try Godhuli Mist.
Is there an OLED or pure-black version?
Godhuli Night is the OLED flavor. The background is near-black, and the text is slightly softened to avoid the glow (halation) that bright text causes on OLED screens.
Is it colorblind friendly?
Yes. Key pairs were checked with protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia simulations:
- added vs. removed lines
- errors vs. successes
- types vs. strings
- keywords vs. functions
Errors also use an undercurl and icons, not color alone.
Does it work in Cursor, VSCodium or Windsurf?
Yes. Install it from Open VSX.
Why don't I see different colors for classes, parameters or properties?
Turn on "editor.semanticHighlighting.enabled": true, and make sure your language extension (for example, TypeScript, Pylance or rust-analyzer) is active.
Can I tweak a color?
Yes. Use workbench.colorCustomizations and editor.tokenColorCustomizations scoped to "[Godhuli Dark]" in your settings. To change the palette itself, see For contributors below.
Design science
| Role (APCA Lc vs editor background) |
Dark |
Night |
Mist |
Light |
Target |
| Identifiers |
79.9 |
76.1 |
74.8 |
85.2 |
75–90 (Mist 69+, Night ≤ 78) |
| Strings |
71.1 |
72.7 |
70.3 |
72.4 |
≥ 70 |
| Control flow |
69.9 |
71.4 |
69.3 |
75.7 |
above keywords |
| Types |
66.3 |
67.9 |
65.3 |
72.1 |
≥ 60 |
| Functions |
65.6 |
67.2 |
64.6 |
74.2 |
≥ 60 |
| Keywords |
59.7 |
61.3 |
59.0 |
68.7 |
≥ 58 |
| Comments |
48.5 |
48.0 |
47.8 |
51.1 |
45–60, readable and receding |
| Punctuation |
46.3 |
47.9 |
45.4 |
56.1 |
quiet, ≥ 15 below identifiers |
- Low color on large areas, more on syntax. Backgrounds stay nearly neutral (C* ≤ 3), syntax uses moderate color, and only errors, debugging and the ember accent use strong color.
- Readable under selection. On a selected line, identifiers keep Lc ≥ 72 and comments ≥ 41.
- Distinct suggestions. Ghost text (AI suggestions) is cool gray and upright, so it's never confused with comments (warm italic) or inlay hints (gray chips).
- Full per-role values (hex, L*, C*, hue, contrast) for every flavor are in docs/PALETTE.md.
Love it? Leave a rating ⭐
Ratings and reviews help other developers find Godhuli. If the theme makes your evenings easier, please rate it on the Marketplace. Found a token that looks wrong? Open an issue with a screenshot and the language.
For contributors
All colors come from design tokens. Never edit themes/*.json by hand.
tokens/palette.json the only place hex is written: per-flavor roles
tokens/workbench.json VS Code UI colors → roles
tokens/semantic.json semantic tokens → roles
tokens/syntax.json TextMate scopes → roles
scripts/build.mjs generates themes/*.json
scripts/check.mjs quality gate: APCA contrast, colorblind simulation, unified chrome, freshness
npm run build # tokens → themes
npm run check # must print "All checks passed."
npm run docs # regenerate docs/PALETTE.md
Regenerate the README images after color changes with npm run screenshots. It needs Google Chrome or Chromium; set CHROME_PATH if it isn't on PATH. To preview, press F5 in VS Code to open an Extension Development Host with the sample files in preview/. Publishing steps are in PUBLISHING.md.
License
MIT
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