Orange Accent Theme

A color theme built the way Braun built instruments: calm grey plastic, black controls, and a single orange accent signal. One specification, dark and light, the same voice in every app.

Version 0.1, a work in progress. The same palette is available for the Ghostty terminal at orangeaccenttheme.com.

Two variants

• Orange Accent Dark: warm umber surfaces. Keywords carry the orange signal; types glow in watch-hand amber and attributes in the teal of a vacuum-fluorescent display.
• Orange Accent Light: instrument-grey paper and black ink. The orange fills buttons, badges and the cursor; keywords take a deep rust that stays readable on light paper.

Design principles

• One signal. A single orange, #FD4B21, does the job of the knob, the switch and the second hand: the cursor, focus, buttons and active tabs. Hover is the same orange, slightly translucent.
• Black controls. Operators are set in the text color, the way every control on a Braun device is black.
• Grey plastic. Surfaces are one neutral ramp, from the housing down to the text.
• Readable. Every syntax color clears WCAG AA (4.5:1) against its background. Only comments and Markdown quotes are deliberately quieter.

Install

1. Open the Extensions view (Cmd+Shift+X on macOS, Ctrl+Shift+X on Windows and Linux), search for Orange Accent Theme, and select Install.
2. Run Preferences: Color Theme and choose Orange Accent Dark or Orange Accent Light.

To switch between the two with your system appearance, add this to your settings.json:

"window.autoDetectColorScheme": true,
"workbench.preferredDarkColorTheme": "Orange Accent Dark",
"workbench.preferredLightColorTheme": "Orange Accent Light"

Syntax colors

License

MIT