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.

Color palette

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

Syntax colors

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.
• All colored terminal colors reach 4.5:1; only "bright white" is pale on purpose.
• Errors, warnings, and additions differ in lightness as well as hue, so they remain distinguishable with deuteranopia and protanopia.

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 }
    }
  }
}

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