The theme for developers who already burned out but still have deadlines.
Built on one premise: your eyes are taking damage and your current theme doesn't care. Warm Burnout does. Fully warm palette, minimal blue light, contrast-audited to clinical standards. Two variants: Dark for the 3am sessions and Light for when someone forces you to open the blinds.
Most themes look great in screenshots. Then you use them for 14 hours straight and your eyes feel like they've been sandpapered.
The blues, cyans, and purples that make themes look "cool" emit at 450-500nm, the exact wavelength range that suppresses melatonin, triggers digital eye strain, and makes your ophthalmologist wince. Your theme is fighting your body's ability to rest.
Warm Burnout strips out almost all blue-spectrum syntax colors, leaving a fully warm palette (550-630nm dominant) that your retinas can survive.
Not vibes. Math.
Every syntax color meets WCAG AAA (>= 7:1 contrast ratio) against the editor background. Every single one. Most themes can't even get comments past 4:1.
| Role | Color | Ratio | Style |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foreground | #bfbdb6 |
9.6:1 | normal |
| Keywords | #ff8f40 |
8.0:1 | bold |
| Functions | #ffb454 |
10.3:1 | normal |
| Types/classes | #90aec0 |
7.8:1 | italic |
| Strings | #b4bc78 |
9.0:1 | normal |
| Constants | #d4a8b8 |
8.7:1 | normal |
| Comments | #b4a89c |
7.8:1 | italic |
| Errors | #f49090 |
7.9:1 | normal |
Your comments are readable at 3am. On purpose.
The light theme uses #F5EDE0, a warm sepia cream, not white. 14.6% less bright than pure white. Estimated ~4000K color temperature vs white's ~6500K, roughly 40-50% less melatonin suppression compared to white-background themes.
| Role | Color | Ratio | Style |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foreground | #3a3630 |
10.3:1 | normal |
| Keywords | #924800 |
5.7:1 | bold |
| Functions | #855700 |
5.4:1 | normal |
| Types/classes | #285464 |
7.2:1 | italic |
| Strings | #4d5c1a |
6.3:1 | normal |
| Constants | #7e4060 |
6.5:1 | normal |
| Comments | #544c40 |
7.3:1 | italic |
| Errors | #b03434 |
5.3:1 | normal |
All 15 syntax tokens pass AA. No exceptions.
The dark background (#1a1510) is a warm brown-black. Pure black (#000000) causes halation, a glow/bleed effect around text that affects roughly 33% of the population (those with astigmatism). The warm tint eliminates this.
The light background (#F5EDE0) is warm sepia cream. No pure white anywhere.
Color alone fails under fatigue. When you've been staring at code for 12 hours, your color discrimination drops. For the ~8% of males with red-green color vision deficiency, warm tones blur together.
- Bold: structural keywords (
if,return,const). Your eye scans these for code flow. - Italic: types and comments. The single cool accent (steel-blue/teal) + italic makes types unmistakable.
- Normal: everything else.
A protanopic developer running on no sleep can distinguish structure from types from data.
The palette is fully warm except types/classes: #90aec0 (dark) / #285464 (light). This is the literal color of oxidized copper. One cool landmark in a warm field improves color distinctiveness without adding blue light load.
The accent color is red for buttons and badges. But the cursor uses warm gold: #f5c56e dark, #8a6600 light. A red cursor gets confused with error indicators. Gold is visible everywhere.
Inspired by materials that age well. Unlike your eyes.
| Material | Dark | Light | Used for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amber | #ffb454 |
#855700 |
Functions |
| Burnt orange | #ff8f40 |
#924800 |
Keywords |
| Terra cotta | #dc9e92 |
#8e4632 |
HTML tags |
| Dried sage | #b4bc78 |
#4d5c1a |
Strings |
| Verdigris | #96b898 |
#286a48 |
Regex, escapes |
| Dusty mauve | #d4a8b8 |
#7e4060 |
Numbers, constants |
| Coral | #ec9878 |
#883850 |
Member variables |
| Warm stone | #b4a89c |
#544c40 |
Comments |
| Aged brass | #deb074 |
#74501c |
CSS properties |
| Steel patina | #90aec0 |
#285464 |
Types, classes |
| Gold | #e6c08a |
#7a5a1c |
Decorators |
TypeScript, JavaScript, HTML, JSX, CSS, Python, Rust, Go, Java, YAML, JSON, Markdown, Diff.
Zed uses Tree-sitter for syntax highlighting. All tokens mapped from the canonical palette.
Search "Warm Burnout" in the Extensions panel (Cmd+Shift+P > "zed: extensions"), or install as a dev extension by pointing to the zed/ directory.
Then switch themes via Cmd+Shift+P and typing "theme" to select Warm Burnout Dark or Warm Burnout Light.
- VS Code
- JetBrains (IntelliJ, WebStorm, RustRover, etc.)
- Neovim
- Xcode
- Ghostty
- iTerm2
- Windows Terminal
- tmux
- Starship
- Zsh (syntax highlighting + fzf)
- eza
MIT. Use it, fork it, burn it out.