The Mathematical History of a Perfect Color Combination

The colors were part of a theme called “Solarized Dark” for the popular MacOS code editor TextMate. With those starting points, Schoonover sought out other colors that provided just enough—but not too much—contrast between elements, and that maintained the same level of contrast in the light and dark versions. Although he’d tested the color scheme in a variety of applications, Schoonover initially only released themes for a few tools he used in his own work, like the code editor Vim and the text-based email client Mutt.

Source: www.wired.com