Kaolin themes for GNU Emacs
June 1, 2026 Β· View on GitHub
π π The war in Ukraine is ongoing and I'm asking for help π π
I chose a few organisation that focused on humanitarian aids and animal rescue. All these organisations are publishing frequent reports about their impact.
If you are willing and able to help, please consider making a donation to these projects:
- Nova Ukraine β nonprofit organization dedicated to providing humanitarian aid to the people of Ukraine and raising awareness about Ukraine in the United States and throughout the world.
- Leleka Foundation β focusing on the urgent supply of critical medical supplies and protective gear to Ukraineβs defenders and civilians.
- UAnimals β Ukraine's first modern animal rights organization, UAnimals became the country's largest animal rescue organization during wartime.
- Razom for Ukraine β Razom for Ukraine is a leading advocacy and humanitarian organization with 4-star Charity Navigator rating.
- Hospitallers β focus on sourcing and delivering medical supplies for paramedics who save human lives in Ukraine.β
- help us help β a federally registered Canadian charitable organization, focused on humanitarian aid and educational projects in Ukraine and in Canada.
Many other organizations which funding Ukraine and supporting Ukrainians you can find on this page.
Description
Kaolin is a set of eye pleasing themes for GNU Emacs with support for a large number of modes and external packages.

Kaolin theme variants

All screenshots are available in the wiki on the following pages:
- kaolin-dark - a dark jade variant inspired by Sierra.vim
- kaolin-light - light variant of the original kaolin-dark.
- kaolin-aurora - Kaolin meets polar lights.
- kaolin-bubblegum - Kaolin colorful theme with dark blue background.
- kaolin-eclipse - a dark purple variant
- kaolin-galaxy - bright theme based on one of the Sebastian Andaur arts.
- kaolin-ocean - a dark blue variant.
- kaolin-temple - dark background with syntax highlighting focus on blue, green and pink shades
- kaolin-valley-dark - colorful Kaolin theme with brown background.
- kaolin-valley-light - light variant of kaolin-valley theme.
Further themes
WIP
These themes might be changed in the future.
- kaolin-blossom - theme focus on orange and purple with dark background.
- kaolin-breeze - Light Kaolin theme with soft colors.
- kaolin-mono-dark - almost monochrome dark green Kaolin theme.
- kaolin-mono-light - light variant of monochrome theme.
- kaolin-shiva - Kaolin theme with autumn colors and melanzane background.
Planned
TBD
p.s. Bold means that a theme was added to master.
Installation
MELPA
To install the Kaolin themes pack via package.el: M-x package-install RET kaolin-themes RET
Quick start
(require 'kaolin-themes)
(load-theme 'kaolin-dark t)
;; Apply treemacs customization for Kaolin themes, requires the all-the-icons package.
(kaolin-treemacs-theme)
;; Or if you have use-package installed
(use-package kaolin-themes
:config
(load-theme 'kaolin-dark t)
(kaolin-treemacs-theme))
Configuration
Information about configuring Kaolin themes is available in the project wiki.
Advanced highlighting
- highlight-numbers β highlight numbers in source code.
- highlight-quoted β highlight Lisp quotes and quoted symbols.
- rainbow-delimiters β mode which highlights delimiters such as parentheses, brackets or braces according to their depth.
- highlight-defined β highlight known Emacs Lisp symbols.
Mode-line
The mode-line config isn't a part of the Kaolin theme, you can find my telephone-line config here.