# Anatomy of a Dark Theme: Ocean > Anatomy of Ocean, a dark IDE theme: deep teal water lit by bioluminescent cyan, with the coral, anemone pink and sandbar gold of a reef in a diver's light. - URL: https://codigrate.com/blog/anatomy-of-the-ocean-theme - Published: 2026-10-07 - Category: Inspiration - Theme: [Ocean](https://codigrate.com/theme?product=ocean) - Publisher: Codigrate (https://codigrate.com) The sea takes red away first. A few meters under the surface a diver's red fins have already gone brown, by around ten meters most of the red in daylight has been absorbed, and further down the oranges and yellows follow until what is left is a narrow band of blue and green. Below about two hundred meters there is too little of it left to see by, below a thousand meters there is none, and the only light is the light animals make for themselves. Most of it is blue green too, the colors that travel farthest through sea water. Many of the animals that live down there are red, because where no red light arrives, red is the color of being invisible. Codigrate's Ocean theme is built in that water. The dark is teal, the glow is cyan and sea green, and the reds come back the way they do on a night dive, as corals and pinks lit up for a moment by a lamp. What follows takes it apart color by color. It is the seventh nature theme in this series after [Aurora Borealis](https://codigrate.com/blog/anatomy-of-the-aurora-borealis-theme), [Everest](https://codigrate.com/blog/anatomy-of-the-everest-theme), [Sequoia](https://codigrate.com/blog/anatomy-of-the-sequoia-theme), [Autumn](https://codigrate.com/blog/anatomy-of-the-autumn-theme), [Roraima](https://codigrate.com/blog/anatomy-of-the-roraima-theme) and [Sakura](https://codigrate.com/blog/anatomy-of-the-sakura-theme), and the first of the premium themes. ## A Sea Lit From Within The theme's own description is a dive: the deep sea and the quiet glow of life far below the surface, dark teal and blue green shadows, bioluminescent cyan, coral pink and sea glass, deep cool backgrounds to keep the editor restful, and warm sandbar tones for the syntax that matters. The palette names read like a depth chart: Ocean Floor, Deep Water, Dark Current, Deep Reef, Trench Blue, Open Water, then the life on the reef, Tropic Cyan, Lagoon Teal, Sea Glass, Coral Sand, Coral Blush, Anemone Pink, Urchin Violet and Pale Sandbar. Most of the theme is water. The backgrounds, the selected rows and the gutter all sit near one teal, around 187 degrees, and differ only in how deep they are. A sea glass teal [#5AC8B2](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/5AC8B2) runs through the interface as the accent, with a deeper lagoon [#0BA0A5](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/0BA0A5) beside it. The life is laid on top: a tropic cyan [#3FB4D8](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/3FB4D8), a coral blush [#DC7783](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/DC7783), an anemone pink [#EE8EBF](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/EE8EBF), an urchin violet [#B88BDA](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/B88BDA) and a pale sandbar [#EAC089](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/EAC089). ## The Harmony: Teal And Its Coral On a wheel, Ocean splits cleanly in two. The cool half runs from the greens of the reef to the violet of the urchins: a sea green for global variables near 141 degrees, the sea glass of tags near 144 and 156, the accent at 168, the background teal at 187, the cyan keywords at 194, the blue strings at 214 and the violet of static members out at 274. The exact opposite of the teal at 187 is a red near 7 degrees, and that is where the reef sits. Coral blush for methods and fields at 353 and coral sand for attributes at 18 stand on either side of that point, with anemone pink at 329 and the sandbar gold of parameters at 34 fanned out around them. That is a [complementary](https://codigrate.com/blog/harmony-in-opposites) layout, the strongest contrast the wheel has, and it is the contrast of a real reef: warm living color against cold water. Because the warm colors are spent on members, locals, attributes and parameters, the parts of a line you look for are exactly the parts that stand against the sea. ## Backgrounds, Fathoms Deep Ocean's backgrounds are four depths of the same water, all near 187 degrees: - Input [#0B2225](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/0B2225), the ocean floor, the darkest well, where you type into search fields and dialogs. - Editor [#102B2E](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/102B2E), deep water, the teal the code is written on. - Window [#18383C](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/18383C), a dark current for the tool windows and panels. - Surface [#1C4247](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/1C4247), the deep reef the whole window sits in. None of them is black. Each is the same teal with a little more or a little less light, so the panels part like layers of water rather than by drawn lines. The gutter sinks to the floor [#0B2627](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/0B2627), darker than the page beside it, and the current line rises to [#234445](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/234445). A selected row in the project tree is a shallower teal [#275A61](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/275A61) edged in [#52A5B0](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/52A5B0). Two things leave the teal on purpose. The active editor tab sits on a trench blue [#14364D](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/14364D) with an open water underline [#33698E](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/33698E), the one surface that turns toward true blue, so the tab you are in reads as deeper water than the rest. And selected text in the editor turns a dusky plum [#3E3136](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/3E3136), the color a red coral takes at depth before a light reaches it. Search matches glow like something alive: the matched text in a pink [#E1A9C1](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/E1A9C1) on a dark magenta [#331221](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/331221), while the word under the caret is marked in a pale foam [#D6F0F3](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/D6F0F3) on a deep lagoon [#0E5D64](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/0E5D64). ## One Foreground, Several Voices Code is written in a near white [#E0E3E3](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/E0E3E3) at about 11.6:1 against the editor, barely tinted toward the water. The interface text around it is sea salt [#AFBABD](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/AFBABD) at about 7.5:1, and one level down a bluer [#88AAB7](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/88AAB7), so labels and hints read as the same water at a lower light. Comments are where Ocean is unusual. They are a sea foam [#96B9B5](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/96B9B5) at about 7:1, far brighter than the faded grey most dark themes use, with line comments set in italics. They step back by hue and by slant rather than by fading out, so a note in an Ocean file stays easy to read. That is a different rung on the ladder from [the readability post](https://codigrate.com/blog/introduction-to-readability): the comment still reads after the code, but it is never something you have to squint at. The gutter glows the way the deep sea does. The line numbers are a green teal [#27AC8D](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/27AC8D), the number on the current line lights up to a bright [#2DE5BB](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/2DE5BB) at about 9:1, and the caret is a pale cyan [#8DE1DA](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/8DE1DA), so your place on the left edge is marked like a light in dark water. ## Syntax: A Reef In A Diver's Lamp Open a file and the reef fills in: - Keywords in tropic cyan [#3FB4D8](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/3FB4D8), the most frequent colored words in any file, in the color of the water itself lit from within. - Strings, numbers and escapes in a bright blue [#69A6F8](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/69A6F8), the clearest cool color in the editor. - Methods and fields in coral blush [#DC7783](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/DC7783), and JavaScript member functions in a deeper coral [#D8616F](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/D8616F). - Local variables in anemone pink [#EE8EBF](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/EE8EBF), and global variables in a pale sea green [#83DBA2](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/83DBA2). - Static members in an italic urchin violet [#B88BDA](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/B88BDA), the one violet in the theme. - Parameters in pale sandbar [#EAC089](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/EAC089), the warmest light on the reef and the easiest token to find where a function takes its input. - Tags in sea glass [#5AB57E](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/5AB57E), attributes in coral sand [#DC9577](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/DC9577), and annotations in a driftwood brown [#A38473](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/A38473). Class names, function names and constants stay a plain light grey [#E0E0E0](https://codigrate.com/tools/color/E0E0E0) at about 11:1. With the names left uncolored and the keywords in the color of the water, the structure of a file reads as part of the sea, and the reef colors land only on the members, the locals and the inputs you came to find. ## Reading It Back Taken apart, Ocean is deep water and a reef. The backgrounds, the gutter and the selected rows are one teal at different depths, so the frame never competes with the code. The cool colors are the water and its glow, cyan keywords, blue strings, sea glass tags, and the warm colors sit straight across the wheel from it, coral, pink and sandbar gold, kept for the members, the locals and the parameters you look for. The comments stay readable as sea foam, and the names stay a light grey so nothing fights the structure. It suits a dark room and a long session, the kind where the screen is the only light, which is also what the deep sea is like. Ocean is a premium theme: a paid plugin for JetBrains IDEs on the JetBrains Marketplace and part of the All In One bundle, a one time purchase for Sublime Text, Ghostty, iTerm2, macOS Terminal, Slack and Rhino from the Codigrate store, and a LINE theme in the LINE theme shop, all from its [theme page](https://codigrate.com/theme?product=ocean). ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is the Ocean theme? Ocean is one of Codigrate's premium dark nature themes, built around the deep sea: dark teal water, the blue and green glow of animals that make their own light, and the corals and sandbars of a reef. The editor is a deep teal instead of black, the frame around it is the same water at a few depths, and the code is lit like a reef in a diver's lamp: tropic cyan for keywords, a bright blue for strings, coral for members, anemone pink for local variables, urchin violet for static members and a pale sandbar gold for parameters. ### Why is the Ocean background teal instead of black? Because that is the color water leaves behind. Sea water swallows red light first, so the deeper you go the more everything turns blue green before it turns dark. The input wells #0B2225, the editor #102B2E, the tool windows #18383C and the outer frame #1C4247 all share a hue near 187 degrees and differ only in depth, so the panels separate like layers of water rather than by drawn lines, and the cyan and coral on top read clearer against a colored dark than against a flat black. ### How are the syntax colors chosen in Ocean? They follow a reef. The cool half is the water and its glow: tropic cyan keywords, bright blue strings and numbers, sea glass tags and a sea green for global variables. The warm half is the reef itself, set straight across the color wheel from the teal: coral blush for methods and fields, anemone pink for local variables, coral sand for attributes and a pale sandbar gold for parameters. Static members are an italic urchin violet, class and function names stay a light grey, and comments are a sea foam that stays easy to read. ### Where can I get the Ocean theme? Ocean is a premium theme. On JetBrains IDEs it is a paid plugin on the JetBrains Marketplace and is also part of the All In One bundle. For Sublime Text, Ghostty, iTerm2, macOS Terminal, Slack and Rhino it is a one time purchase from the Codigrate store, delivered as a download, and the LINE version is sold in the LINE theme shop. All of them are linked from the Ocean theme page.