How do I change the background and foreground colors used by Vim?
Normal” highlight group for the background and foreground colors. To change the foreground/background colors, you have to modify the “Normal” highlight group. For example, to set the background color to blue and foreground color to white, you can use :highlight Normal ctermbg=blue ctermfg=white guibg=blue guifg=white If you are using the Motif or the Athena version of the GUI Vim, then you can modify the foreground and background resource names in the .Xdefaults files to change the colors: Vim.foreground: Black Vim.backround: Wheat You can also use the “-foreground” and “-background” command-line arguments to specify the foreground and background colors. These arguments are supported only in the Motif or Athena versions: $ gvim -foreground Black -background Wheat For more information, read :help :highlight :help .
Normal” highlight group for the background and foreground colors. To change the foreground/background colors, you have to modify the “Normal” highlight group. For example, to set the background color to blue and foreground color to white, you can use :highlight Normal ctermbg=blue ctermfg=white guibg=blue guifg=white If you are using the Motif or the Athena version of the GUI Vim, then you can modify the foreground and background resource names in the .Xdefaults files to change the colors: Vim.foreground: Black Vim.backround: Wheat You can also use the “-foreground” and “-background” command-line arguments to specify the foreground and background colors. These arguments are supported only in the Motif or Athena versions: $ gvim -foreground Black -background Wheat For more information, read :help :highlight :help .Xdefaults :help -gui 24.3.
