Penumbra, a perceptually optimized color palette based on natural light

In plain words

Penumbra is a color palette designed for code syntax highlighting and development environments. Built using modern color science, it uses uniform luminance across colors to reduce visual strain while maintaining high contrast and distinguishability. The background colors are based on natural sunlight and shadow tones rather than neutral greys. It includes a basic VSCode extension and is available as an open-source project.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

Penumbra Color Theme. Contribute to nealmckee/penumbra development by creating an account on GitHub.

In the maker’s words, at launch

For this palette, I used recent advances in color science, which made perceptual design more accessible, to choose a set of colors (mainly for syntax highlighting) that have uniform luminance for less visually uneven, fluidly readable code, but at the same time maximally distinguishable hue and chroma. The background…

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