LunarNewYearSmith Themes
Two Lunar New Year color themes for Visual Studio: Lunar New Year Night, red lacquer in lantern light, and Lunar New Year Light, rice paper with vermilion and jade. Gold, red and jade for the whole IDE and the code editor — festive, and still comfortable for a full working day.
Free · Visual Studio 2022 and 2026 · dark and light · no code, only colors
Why LunarNewYearSmith
A dark one and a light one
Lunar New Year Night for the evenings of the festival, Lunar New Year Light for the day. The same colors in both: gold or vermilion keywords, jade types, lantern-red or gold-ink strings, peony methods.
Made for coding, not only for a screenshot
Every syntax color stays readable on its background. Red is everywhere in this festival, so the error squiggle is a brighter, colder red than anything in the code, and warnings stay amber.
The whole IDE
Title bar, tabs, Solution Explorer, tool windows, menus, the status bar (imperial red, jade while debugging, gold while building) and the editor: selection, current line, find highlight, brace matching.
Free, nothing else
No subscriptions, no "pro" version, no data collection, no messages at startup. There is no code inside — only colors — so it never asks for anything, not even a rating.
The themes
Lunar New Year Night
Red lacquer in lantern light. Keywords are gold, types jade, strings coral lanterns, numbers the night sky, methods peony; comments are warm smoke. The window frame is deep lacquer red, the status bar imperial red, the accent gold.
Lunar New Year Light
Rice paper by day. Vermilion keywords, jade types, gold-ink strings, peony methods and brown-ink comments; the window frame is a soft red.
Turn it on
Visual Studio 2026
- Tools › Theme › Lunar New Year Night (or Lunar New Year Light).
- Tools › Editor Appearance › Match Theme — the editor then takes the Lunar New Year colors too. With Light or Dark chosen there, the code keeps the usual colors.
Visual Studio 2022
- Tools › Options › Environment › General › Color Theme › Lunar New Year Night or Lunar New Year Light. The editor follows the theme by itself.
Colors you changed yourself in Tools › Options › Environment › Fonts and Colors stay on top of any theme. To get the Lunar New Year ones there, reset those items to their defaults.
Colors
The main colors of the editor. The rest of the IDE is built from the same palette.
| What | Lunar New Year Night | Lunar New Year Light |
|---|---|---|
| Background | #1A0E0E | #FBF4E8 |
| Text | #F4E9DC | #2A1A14 |
| Keywords | #F5B83D | #A6261C |
if, return, throw | #FFD77A | #8A1F16 |
| Classes and structs | #5FD4A6 | #1C7A58 |
| Strings | #FF8A7A | #8A5A00 |
| Numbers | #8EC5FF | #1B5FA8 |
| Methods | #F7A6C8 | #9C2F6A |
| Comments | #9C7F78 | #7E6A5C |
| Error squiggle | #FF3355 | #C8202F |
| Warning squiggle | #FFB020 | #A86200 |
| Status bar | #B3121E | #A6261C |
The main syntax colors — text, keywords, types, strings, numbers, methods — have a contrast of at least 4.8:1 with the background, above the 4.5:1 recommended for normal text; comments are a little softer, from 4.6:1.
FAQ
The IDE is festive, but the code has the usual colors.
In Visual Studio 2026, set Tools › Editor Appearance to Match Theme. If it already is, check Tools › Options › Environment › Fonts and Colors: colors you changed there stay above any theme.
Why do the Lunar New Year themes have no color square in the Theme menu?
Visual Studio draws the square only for its own built-in themes. Themes from extensions are listed by name — this is the same for every theme on the Marketplace.
Can I have the Lunar New Year editor with another theme of the IDE?
Not through the menus: Editor Appearance in Visual Studio 2026 offers only its own five choices, and extensions cannot add to them. The editor colors come with the Lunar New Year theme.
Which languages are colored?
C# and Visual Basic get every color, including methods, parameters and interfaces. Other languages use the shared colors — keywords, strings, numbers, comments, types.
Does LunarNewYearSmith send any data?
No. It contains no code at all — only two color themes that Visual Studio reads.
Where do I report a color that does not look right?
Open an issue in the Feedback repository on GitHub, ideally with a screenshot. You can also use the Q&A tab on the Marketplace.
Changelog
1.0.0
- First release: Lunar New Year Night and Lunar New Year Light for Visual Studio 2022 and 2026 — the whole IDE and the code editor.