Question

I really don’t like the “Light” theme of VS 2012. I’ve managed to change a few things to make it better but one thing is still annoying me – the fact that the solution explorer background is a light grey colour. Is there a way to change this back to white? I can’t see an entry for Solution Explorer in Options > Environment > Fonts and Colors, so how can I change this? Is it stored in a theme file somewhere?

(Please note I’m not looking to do this programmatically, so this is not a dupe of the existing similar-sounding questions)

Answer 1

I’ve found that easiest solution is to use this Microsoft-developed Visual Studio 2012 Color Theme Editor and just select the Blue theme to effectively get the VS 2010 colours back:

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/366ad100-0003-4c9a-81a8-337d4e7ace05

Saves digging around for hours in long lists of UI elements. You just select another preset theme and you’re done 🙂

EDIT : Here are steps using the VS2012 Color Theme Editor:

1. Tools –> Customize Colors
2. New Theme –> create a new theme from one of the ready made themes, hit Create
3. Hover over your new Custom Theme, hit Edit Theme
4. Magical Step: Directly under the theme tab, click the 5th button “Show All Elements”, here you can find what you’re looking for
5. TreeView –> Background, this changes the color of the Solution Explorer
6. Environment –> ToolWindowBackground, color for background of Team Explorer (my pet peeve, since the contrast on this UI usually needs tweaking between controls and window)

UPDATE

Visual Studio 2012 Update 3 now includes the old “Blue” theme by default, so if you update to this version you can easily select the old blue theme without jumping throught he hoops above, if that’s all you wanted to achieve.