Whether it's for UI design or theming, these colour palettes have played a great role in enhancing the eye-candy of my software projects. In fact, this very website uses one of the colour palettes on this list. I hope to share this list so that you may also find great use for these colour palettes in your own projects.

4: Monokai

A warm, yet dark, colour palette created by Wimer Hazenberg. Monokai is available in many text editors, terminal emulators, and (Linux) desktop environments.

There is also a variant called Monokai Pro by the same author. This new palette is a modern interpretation of the classic palette and aims to improve functionality and legibility; perfect for coding.

3: Dracula

Dracula is a dark colour palette created by Zeno Rocha back in 2013. Since then, Dracula has grown to be one of the most popular colour palettes ever created and has been ported to many applications. There is no light variant available for this colour palette because Dracula is afraid of the light.

Like Monokai, Dracula has a modern remake designed for terminal emulators and code editors called Dracula Pro.

Dracula Pro is a paid theme and its license must be purchased.

2: Catppuccin

Catppuccin is a pastel colour palette which skyrocketed in popularity since its inception in 2021. It consists of 4 colour variants: Latte, Frappe, Macchiato and Mocha (with Macchiato being the main variant). Catppuccin is very popular in the Linux theming community due to its eye-pleasing pastel colours which pair nicely with pastel wallpapers.

1: Tokyo Night

This is it... my favourite colour palette: Tokyo Night. A colour palette made to celebrate the lights of downtown Tokyo at night. Unlike many of the other colour palettes on this list, Tokyo Night has a light theme among its three variants:

  • Night - The main, dark variant.
  • Storm - The same palette as Night except for a lighter background colour.
  • Light - A light variant for those who prefer a light theme.

Remember I mentioned that this website uses one of the colour palettes on this list? Well, Tokyo Night is that colour palette. This website uses the Night variant for its dark theme and the Light variant for its light theme.

I also created an unofficial Tokyo Night organization to serve as a hub where one can find the ports made by others as well as ports made by myself. You can find a good amount of resources in that organization if you plan on using Tokyo Night in a project.