Zenburn - A pleasant color scheme for PuTTY

PuTTY's ("Putty" henceforth) default color scheme doesn't work for everyone. Especially, the (pure) blue color used for listing folders; that looks terrible on the black background.

On searching for better color schemes for Putty, I stumbled upon this blog post which shows two color schemes for Putty. Out of these, I settled for the Zenburn color scheme.

Steps to modify Putty's color scheme and saving it to new or already loaded sessions can be found here.

Putty RGB colors/options for the Zenburn color scheme are as follows -
  • Default Foreground - 255/255/255
  • Default Background - 51/51/51
  • ANSI Black - 77/77/77
  • ANSI Green - 152/251/152
  • ANSI Yellow - 240/230/140
  • ANSI Blue - 205/133/63
  • ANSI Blue Bold -135/206/235
  • ANSI Magenta - 255/222/173 or 205/92/92
  • ANSI Cyan - 255/160/160
  • ANSI Cyan Bold - 255/215/0
  • ANSI White - 245/222/179
In addition to the above colors, I applied two more changes to the font (Putty -> Window -> Appearance -> Font Settings) - 
  • Font - Consolas, 10-point
  • Font quality - Default (you can play around with this option to see what suits your screen/display best).

Zenburn theme in a PuTTY console.

Edit: If you're on Windows, check out this Github repo which contains ready made registry files for installing the Zenburn scheme in Putty.

More on the Zenburn color scheme -

( Labels: , ) ( Posted on: February 28, 2013 )

26 comments:

  1. AnonymousNovember 2, 2013 at 6:06 PM

    Awesome! I've been looking for a good PuTTY theme.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousDecember 16, 2013 at 6:10 AM

    Great. Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownDecember 21, 2013 at 10:43 AM

    This color scheme is beautiful, I love it. It's the best I've come across. Thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownFebruary 6, 2014 at 11:08 AM

    Have been trying to modify my colors in Putty. I can make the changes in the box, but they don't seem to be saved anywhere. What must I do to save them?

    Tom

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownFebruary 16, 2014 at 4:03 PM

      You have to go back to the sessions section and save it as a session. Probably want to save it into your default session.

      Delete
  5. krautschFebruary 24, 2014 at 6:07 AM

    Awesome! Thank you very much!

    ReplyDelete
  6. chethan...March 4, 2014 at 12:35 AM

    Love it! The red text is hard to read, It's better if you set ANSI Red to 255/45/45.

    ReplyDelete
  7. zamaanApril 2, 2014 at 12:16 AM

    damn, i was banging head for hours and landed here after googling "how the hell we change the putty color scheme". Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  8. UnknownApril 24, 2014 at 3:14 PM

    Exactly what I'd been looking for: something to mimic Sublime Text 2. Thanks so much!

    ReplyDelete
  9. brianbAugust 22, 2014 at 9:15 AM

    thanks! awsome colors

    ReplyDelete
  10. aXqdDecember 2, 2014 at 12:08 AM

    Add a reg file to set the colors you mentioned above. Replace PLACE_HOLDER with your session name to use it. https://gist.github.com/axqd/7082cd3ac17e29e6f377

    ReplyDelete
  11. UnknownJuly 18, 2015 at 4:26 AM

    Thanks, like this colour scheme very much!

    ReplyDelete
  12. UnknownAugust 20, 2015 at 10:58 AM

    Hi guys... I've been trying to set the Putty colors for a long time, but nothing has worked.

    I have enabled all the options suggested as ANSI color, and bolded text as a different color, but still see the same color font... please help!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MatthewMay 9, 2017 at 1:45 PM

      Do you have the option "use system colors" checked? If you do, it won't honor your colors.

      Delete
  13. UnknownOctober 29, 2015 at 2:22 AM

    You have to create a session (or load one if you have created one already), then make your changes and then click save in the session window. Also make sure that Window -> Colours -> Use system colours, is not ticked (and if it is you need to save again before connecting).

    ReplyDelete
  14. UnknownNovember 23, 2015 at 3:37 PM

    You're awesome man. Appreciate this

    ReplyDelete
  15. Ravikiran GadepalliMarch 29, 2016 at 6:06 AM

    Really Superb :D

    Excellent settings ... But just have a doubt ..
    If any directory have a full access the folder is listed with green and red .. how do I change that to a black

    ReplyDelete
  16. Varun PrathapMarch 24, 2017 at 10:35 PM

    Awesome, the theme is very addictive!!
    I want to have the same for Terminal for Ubuntu. How do i do that?

    ReplyDelete
  17. UnknownMay 10, 2018 at 7:59 AM

    superb theme. I was looking for something basic,simple yet visible. This has got me there.

    Many thanks my friend.

    ReplyDelete
  18. UnknownMay 10, 2018 at 8:00 AM

    I was looking for some simple, visible and rocking theme and your theme got me there.

    many thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  19. DuaneJune 23, 2018 at 6:29 AM

    so awesome.

    ReplyDelete
  20. UnknownAugust 17, 2018 at 3:53 AM

    Really great and Useful.

    Much Appreciated :)

    ReplyDelete
  21. JustinWJuly 24, 2019 at 1:45 PM

    Thumbs up!

    ReplyDelete
  22. CartoosiAugust 22, 2019 at 10:22 AM

    This is nice. The black is an oldschool monochrome terminal black, it's like comfort noise for the eyes. The .REG is easily modified for the name of each profile you want it on, I just kept modifying and re-running it.

    ReplyDelete
  23. AnoopApril 22, 2020 at 4:56 PM

    Really nice and cool... :)

    ReplyDelete

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