Lambda-themes is a collection of four higher and lower contrast light and dark themes. The color palette is limited, and organized according to function and salience. Here I largely agree with Nicolas Rougier that attentional constraints matter when thinking about the color palette. Lambda-themes tries to use color in a way to provide for a reasonable compromise between aesthetics and readability.
In general the theme aims to use as few highly distinct colors as possible without crossing over into full “monochrome” territory. It also means that the themes use various devices other than foreground face color to capture meaningful differences in text. Different text weights are used throughout, as are subtle differences in background coloring. Colored headlines are largely avoided.
Splash
Colors
Note that I use SF Mono for my font here, and rainbow-delimiters to colorize parens. The mode-line/status-line is from lambda-line.
Lambda-themes is not yet on MELPA. In the meantime to use this package you’ll have to clone or otherwise download the repo and put it into your load path. Here’s a basic way of setting it up using use-package and straight.
(use-package lambda-themes
:straight (:type git :host github :repo "lambda-emacs/lambda-themes")
:custom
(lambda-themes-set-italic-comments t)
(lambda-themes-set-italic-keywords t)
(lambda-themes-set-variable-pitch t)
:config
;; load preferred theme
(load-theme 'lambda-light))See M-x customize-group lambda-themes for the full list of options.
- Set evil-cursor colors
- Set italic comments or keywords
- Set use of variable pitch in headlines, etc.
- Set a custom color palette.
Lambda-themes exports the color palette for each theme variant as constants, allowing you to use the theme colors in your own customizations. The following palettes are available:
lambda-themes-dark-palette- Dark theme colorslambda-themes-dark-faded-palette- Dark faded theme colorslambda-themes-light-palette- Light theme colorslambda-themes-light-faded-palette- Light faded theme colors
Each palette is an association list with color names mapped to hex values:
;; Example: Get the background color from the dark theme
(alist-get 'bg lambda-themes-dark-palette) ; => "#141414"
;; Example: Use theme colors in your own face customization
(set-face-attribute 'some-face nil
:foreground (alist-get 'focus lambda-themes-light-palette)
:background (alist-get 'highlight lambda-themes-light-palette))
;; Example: Create a custom face using theme colors
(defface my-custom-face
`((((background dark))
:foreground ,(alist-get 'crucial lambda-themes-dark-palette)
:background ,(alist-get 'ultralight lambda-themes-dark-palette))
(((background light))
:foreground ,(alist-get 'crucial lambda-themes-light-palette)
:background ,(alist-get 'highlight lambda-themes-light-palette)))
"My custom face using lambda-themes colors.")Available color keys in each palette:
fg,bg- Foreground and background colorsultralight,highlight,lowlight- Background variantsurgent,crucial,focus- Accent colorsdefault,salient,faded- Text variantserror,warning,success- Status colors- And more specialized colors for UI elements
- Issue #12: Variable pitch setting now properly updates when changed. The
lambda-themes-set-variable-pitchcustomization variable includes a custom setter that automatically reloads the active theme when its value changes, ensuring that disabling variable pitch takes effect immediately.
- Issue #7: Color palettes are now exported and documented for all theme variants, allowing users to access theme colors for custom face definitions and other customizations.
- The colors for this theme have been inspired by Nicolas Rougier’s work on elegant-emacs and nano-emacs, but has evolved with some ideas and colors borrowed from material colors, solarized and nord, as well as color design aided by coolers.co and the classic Werner’s Nomenclature. The faded themes are variations on my bespoke-themes design.
- The function for loading the specific color theme is taken from humanoid-themes.