Quiet Light Balanced
A hybrid color theme for Visual Studio Code: a calm, light-colored workspace alongside a dark code editor and terminal.
Version: 1.6.0
Publisher: Kagome 6 (kagome6)
Theme: Quiet Light Balanced
Overview
Quiet Light Balanced is designed for people who prefer light navigation and workbench surfaces but dark code-editing areas. The theme uses a dark base (vs-dark) for readable text in editor-hosted pages while explicitly styling parts of the workbench with lighter colors.
Features
- Dark code editor with a near-black background (
#121314) and syntax colors adapted from the Visual Studio Code Dark 2026 theme.
- Dark integrated terminal with readable text and ANSI colors.
- Light sidebar and workbench surfaces with contrasting dark text.
- Charcoal activity bar (
#595959), muted blue icons (#C0CFE7), and a pale green selected-item accent (#B4CCB8).
- Readable light-colored editor tabs for active, inactive, and unfocused states.
- Navy status bar (
#444B6C) with white text; debugging states retain a distinct color.
- Dark-base Welcome and editor-hosted surfaces to reduce light/dark text mismatch.
Palette
| Role |
Color |
| Editor and terminal background |
#121314 |
| Main editor foreground |
#BBBEBF |
| Sidebar background |
#F2F0F2 |
| Activity bar background |
#595959 |
| Inactive activity icons |
#C0CFE7 |
| Active activity item background |
#B4CCB8 |
| Title bar background |
#D0D0D0 |
| Status bar background |
#444B6C |
| Status bar foreground |
#FFFFFF |
Additional palette colors include muted yellow (#D1CDB5), mauve (#D2CBD6), deep plum (#41353E), dark green (#3A483C), and soft orange (#C7ADA2). Their use can vary depending on which UI elements are present.
Installation
From Visual Studio Marketplace (once published):
- In VS Code, open Extensions (
Ctrl+Shift+X).
- Search for Quiet Light Balanced, published by Kagome 6 (
kagome6).
- Select Install, then choose Quiet Light Balanced from Preferences: Color Theme (
Ctrl+K, Ctrl+T).
From a VSIX file:
- Open Extensions and choose ... > Install from VSIX....
- Select the VSIX file.
- Choose Quiet Light Balanced in the color theme picker. If necessary, run Developer: Reload Window.
Compatibility and limitations
- The extension manifest declares VS Code compatibility from version 1.85.0 onward. This is a manifest requirement, not a claim that every supported version has been visually tested.
- Theme appearance may differ across operating systems, VS Code versions, and extensions.
- Some third-party Webviews or editor integrations use their own styles and may not fully respect workbench theme color settings.
- User-level
workbench.colorCustomizations, editor.tokenColorCustomizations, and editor.semanticTokenColorCustomizations may override colors supplied by this theme.
- This is a color theme only. It does not run a background service or modify source files.
Credits and licenses
The workbench composition and custom color selections are distributed under the MIT License; see LICENSE.
Some syntax highlighting and fallback token definitions were adapted from the Microsoft Visual Studio Code open-source project. The relevant upstream MIT copyright notice and license terms are reproduced in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. The project is independently maintained and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft.
Microsoft Visual Studio Code source: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode
Dark 2026 theme source: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/main/extensions/theme-defaults/themes/2026-dark.json
Original Visual Studio Dark token rules: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/main/extensions/theme-defaults/themes/dark_vs.json
License
MIT — see LICENSE, and THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for upstream materials.
