I had been using Solarized Dark colour scheme for a very long time. I do not remember exactly when I started using it, but it must be earlier than 2015. I was sold by its mathematical formulation, and the fact the all major contrasts are equal. But now, I have changed my mind. The contrast was simply too low.
Actually, I think I was introduced to the Solarized back in 2012. At first, I hate it, especially the light version. To me, non-greyscale background colour was a putting me off.
There was a time when I was looking for a perfect dark theme. I think I was mainly using Oblivion, or whatever the grey-ish dark theme come preloaded with each application. For me, the Monokai theme that come by default with Sublime Text was beautiful. The Dracula theme that come with JetBrains products was beautiful. But then, around 2014-2015, I stumbled upon Solarized again, but this time, I was hooked. I turned almost every text editors I used to Solarized Dark theme (which, at that point in time, it really was just JetBrains, Sublime Text, and Notepad++).
However, in mid-2019, I was starting to feel the strain from Solarized Dark. I read an article about Solarized Dark having too much blue that was hurting the eyes, but I was not convinced. I ended up increasing the font size by a LOT to increase readability of the code.
It was not until 2020 that I began to realise the reason. It wasn’t about the blue light (though that may have also contributed) — it was the contrast.
The default foreground colour of Solarized dark is #839496 and the background is #002b36. This give the contrast ratio of 1:4.75. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WACG) requires a minimum of 1:4.5 contrast ratio for content (less than 18px) and prefers ratio of 1:7. (Okay, that is not what they actually said, but I prefer to interpret them this way.)
1:4.75, while not low, is not high either. And after some time, I find that it was the lower contrast that give me the problem. I have changed my main editors (as of now, I am mainly using JetBrains, gedit, vim, and TeXStudio, and occasionally Sublime Text) to either the Night Owl theme or Dracula when Night Owl wasn’t available.
It reduced my eye strain immensely.
I do not think I am going to Solarized any more.