A light theme based on the Nord color palette, adapted for light backgrounds.
Nord is a popular color palette known for its elegant arctic-inspired colors, originally designed for dark themes. Nord Light brings the same aesthetic to light theme lovers, with carefully adjusted colors to ensure proper contrast and readability on light backgrounds.
These colors are used for backgrounds and UI elements:
| Name | Hex | Usage |
|---|---|---|
| Nord 4 | #D8DEE9 |
Selection, borders, secondary backgrounds |
| Nord 5 | #E5E9F0 |
Sidebar, toolbar, inactive backgrounds |
| Nord 6 | #ECEFF4 |
Main editor background |
The terminal ports (Kitty, Neovim, Zellij) shift this hierarchy one step darker: #E5E9F0 as main background, #D8DEE9 for panels, and #C8D0DA for selections.
| Name | Hex | Usage |
|---|---|---|
| Nord 0 | #2E3440 |
Main text, identifiers |
| Nord 1 | #3B4252 |
Secondary text |
| Nord 2 | #434C5E |
Tertiary text |
| Nord 3 | #4C566A |
Comments base, punctuation |
The original Nord accent colors are designed for dark backgrounds. For the light theme, we darkened them significantly to ensure proper contrast and readability.
| Element | Original Nord | Nord Light | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Classes/Types | #8FBCBB (nord7) |
#1C7473 |
Teal - class names, type references |
| Functions | #88C0D0 (nord8) |
#0C7482 |
Cyan - function declarations and calls |
| Tags | #81A1C1 (nord9) |
#4B6C8C |
Light blue - HTML/XML tags, operators |
| Keywords | #5E81AC (nord10) |
#3B5E85 |
Blue - language keywords |
| Strings | #A3BE8C (nord14) |
#577140 |
Green - string literals |
| Numbers | #B48EAD (nord15) |
#865B7F |
Purple - numeric literals |
| Constants | #EBCB8B (nord13) |
#7F6614 |
Yellow - constants, enums |
| Fields | #D08770 (nord12) |
#975943 |
Orange - instance/static fields |
| Errors | #BF616A (nord11) |
#AE4750 |
Red - errors (darkened for contrast) |
- Darkening factor: ~25-40% darker than original Nord colors
- Saturation: Maintained or slightly increased for vibrancy
- Contrast ratio: Verified by calculation (WCAG relative luminance). Text colors (
#2E3440/#3B4252/#4C566A) exceed 6:1 against every background. Accent colors and the muted gray meet >=4.5:1 (WCAG AA) against both the#E5E9F0and#ECEFF4backgrounds.
- Based on Nord Theme by Sven Greb
MIT License
- JetBrains IDEs (PhpStorm, IntelliJ IDEA, WebStorm, etc.)
- Visual Studio Code (Visual Studio Code, Cursor, VSCodium, etc.)
- Kitty
- Neovim
- Zellij
Created by Vincenzo Petrucci (@nahime0) as part of Illegal Studio.