21 Best Vim Themes

Vim is an open-source and free text editor that operates like any other text editor, for example, Notepad ++ and Sublime.

To run Vim, one needs to use the command-line interface (CLI) or else graphical user interface, which is GUI.

When we use the word themes, it is basically color schemes, which lets you combine colors to create an appealing aesthetic when you use them. The Vim feature is ready-to-use.

Here in this article, we will talk about the 21 best Vim themes that you can go for.

1. Gruvbox

Gruvbox theme is available both in light and dark versions. The theme is designed as a bright them with pastel retro groove colors and it seems to be heavily inspired by solarized, badwolf, and jellybeans.

The main focus when developing Gruvbox is to keep colors easily distinguishable, contrast enough, and still be pleasant for the eyes.

Pros

Gruvbox is available in both dark and light colors, and the reddish background makes it look consistent when you toggle between the two colors.

The theme offers multiple contrast settings. There are three variants available, each with different contrasts.

Gruvbox can be customized in detail. You can customize the size of the tabs, contrast of color schemes, icons of file types, an indentation in the sidebar and more.

Cons

There is no list of supported editors

2. Molokai

Molokai is a Vim port of the monokai theme for TextMate. The theme was created by Wimer Hazenberg.

By default, it has a dark gray background, and 256-color terminals are also supported.

However, only the dark gray background style is supported on terminal vim at this time.

Pros

Molokai theme looks great

It has a strong contrast

One of the most downloaded themes for an IDE

The theme is easy to install with Vundle

Cons

No cons as of now

3. Solarized Dark

Solarized Dark is created by Ethan Schoonover. This theme is available both in light and dark mode. It is a sixteen-color palette, eight accent colors, and eight monotones.

Solarized Dark has several unique properties and is designed with both precise CIELAB lightness relationships and a refined set of hues based on fixed color wheel relationships.

The theme has been tested extensively on color calibrated displays and a variety of lighting conditions.

Pros

The color scheme has been designed with huge background knowledge

There are ready-made packages for Vim, IntelliJ, iTerm, and Emacs

Works well with multiple fonts

Cons

Some of the version may not work such as Vanilla

The theme is not useful for night use

Have very low contrast against the background which makes it hard to read.

4. onehalf light

onehalf light color scheme is clean, vibrant, modern, and pleasing light/dark color schemes for Sublime Text, (Neo) Vim, iTerm, and more.

It offers consistent gui colors and cterm, plus matching themes for plugins such as vim-airline, lightline or NERDTree. onehalf light provides harmonious colors and styles for all UI elements and syntax groups.

Pros

onehalf light is available in both light and dark color schemes

The theme supports an array of terminals and editors offering consistent color theme

Cons

None found

5. Dracula

Dracula is a dark theme for Vim, Emacs, Brackets, Atom, Alfred, Notepad++, iTerm, TextMate, Gedit, LightPaper, and more.

Pros

The colors used are comfortable on eyes and do not pop

The colors are properly separated so the text is always clear

It is well designed

Available for tons of terminals, editors, and more

Cons

The dark contrast could be hard on eyes

6. Base16 family

Base16 family is architecture for building themes based on carefully chosen syntax highlighting using a base of sixteen colors. Base16 family provides a set of guidelines on how to style syntax and how to cod a builder for compiling base 16 schemes and templates.

Pros

Base16 family has many color schemes

The support team of the Base16 family is outstanding

It is a Solarized Dark scheme and compatible with htop

Cons

It just offers 16 colors

Each theme needs manual tweaking

7. Zenburn

Zenburn is a low-contrast color scheme for Vim. It is easy on eyes and designed to keep one in the zone for long programming sessions.

This color scheme has been ported to many different editors and environments.

Pros

Zenburn has a low blue-light color, which is not harmful to the eyes.

Low contrast reduces eyestrain

The theme is color-blind friendly

Cons

Some may find the contrast to be too low

8. vim-atom-dark

The vim-atom-dark theme’s colors are inspired by the excellent One Dark syntax theme for the Atom text editor.

Pros

Vim-atom-dark color scheme is easy on the eyes

Cons

None found

9. papercolor-theme light

papercolor-theme light is a light and dark color scheme for terminal and graphic Vim awesome editor. The theme is inspired by Google’s Material Design and has improved code readability and is great for making presentations.

Pros

Papercolor-theme light has a clean and readable look

Supports True color/GUI-color and identical 236-color

Cons

None found

10. Tender

Tender is a dark and fresh 24-bit color scheme for Vim, Airline, and Lightline. This theme is generated by Estilo.

Pros

Tender is suitable for long coding sessions

Looks great with nvim and lightline

Cons

The theme doesn’t go well with the older versions of vim

11. Badwolf

Badwolf is a color scheme for Vim created by Steve Losh. It is a high-contrast color scheme with dark background making it great for coding.

Pros

A high-contrast color scheme for Vim

Easy to use

Cons

Scope of improvement in HTML

12. nord-vim

Nord-Vim is an arctic, north bluish clean and elegant color scheme for Vim.

It is built for Vim’s terminal and GUI mode with true colors and support for many third-party syntax and UI plugins such as bundled themes for lightline, vim, and vim-airline.

Pros

The unified UI and editor syntax element design provides clutter-free appearance

Supports a wide range of programming languages

Cons

None found

13. Jellybeans.vim

Jellybeans.vim is a colorful, dark color scheme inspired by ir_black and twilight. The theme is mainly designed for graphical Vim but supports various color terminals such as 24-bit, 256, 88, 16, and 8.

Jellybeans.vim color scheme is created by Nano Tech.

Pros

Very versatile, both on dark and light background

Cons

None found

14. hyper-snazzy

hyper-snazzy is an elegant color scheme with bright colors and was created by Sindre Sorhus.

Pros

Dimmed colors are available to distract elements, for example, braces, and punctuations

The colors are consistent

Cons

Some may find the contrast hard on the eye

15. vim-one

vim-one is an adaptation of one-light and one-dark color schemes for Vim and was created by Ramzi Akremi. It supports true colors and is one of the best Atom Color scheme which is now for Vim and NeoVim.

Pros

Looks polished

Clone of Atom theme

Cons

None found

16. oceanic-next

oceanic-next is a neovim theme inspired by Oceanic Next for Sublime.

It is not a direct port but uses some colors from the sublime theme that are fitted to work with neovim and vim8.

The dark-bluish color theme is classic and quite soothing.

Pros

A classic theme

Looks great and isn’t hard on the eyes

Cons

Some people may find the theme to be challenging to work with

17. ayu-light

ayu-light is a simple, bright, and elegant theme for modern Vim. It is available both in dark and light format.

The light format of ayu-light is exceptionally pleasing and has bright and distinctive colors. This simple theme allows you to work for long hours.

Pros

Easy on the eyes

The theme allows you to work for long hours

Cons

The white background makes the color pop-out

18. Solarized light

In the solarized dark version, we already shared that the theme is available in light version too.

The color palette has a nice feel to it and was created by Ethan Schoonover. Solarized light is one of the most popular vim themes and is available for terminal emulators and code editors.

Pros

The theme has been nicely created

Various versions available

It works very well with different fonts

Cons

The contrast is low

19. Inkpot

Inkpot is a dark color scheme for VIM created by Ciaran McCreesh. It works well in the GUI and in some 88 color terminals and 256 color terminals.

The theme has been downloaded more than 30,000 times.

Pros

The dark theme looks great

Cons

The contrast could be too harsh for a few people

20. Purify

Purify is a clean and vibrant color scheme for Vim created by Kyoz. This color scheme supports almost all languages.

Pros

The theme is very simple and beautiful

It is clean and vibrant

Supports almost all the languages

Cons:

None found

21. Palenight

Palenight is a soothing color scheme for Neovim/Vim. This theme is based on Material Pale Night. The lovely yellow, purple, and orange color makes it look livelier. Drew Tempelmeyer is the creator of Palenight

Pros

The colors are lively

Easy to install

Cons

The bright colors may appear to pop-up

Conclusion

Depending on the taste of the user, you may choose to go with the dark or light color vim themes.

All of the themes that we have mentioned here are popular, and you can pick any of them or multiple of them and keep changing the vim themes from time to time.