Window borders, gaps and the focus color ramp.

Borders and gaps

• Border style: default_border pixel 5 — a frame only, no titlebar
• Inner gaps: 5px, outer gaps: 5px
• smart_gaps on — a lone window on a workspace gets no gaps
• Exceptions: the yad Mic Gain / Out Gain sliders pin border pixel 2

Gaps show the wallpaper, so every border is drawn against wall_light.png (average #547A7F, range #356E7B…#6E9AA1). Border colors have to clear that range to be visible.

Focus color ramp

Perceived lightness (L) rises monotonically with focus, so the brightest frame on the desktop is always the focused window:

class              frame      L    meaning
---------------------------------------------------------------
focused            #cbdcdb   215   the one window you are in
focused_inactive   #4F7A84   110   last focus on another output
unfocused          #0f1c1f    24   everything else
urgent             #8BB2B5   167   demanding attention

focused is near-white because it is the only palette color that clears the wallpaper. focused_inactive sits on the wallpaper tone deliberately — the demoted tier should blend into the gaps.

The five color fields

client.<class> <border> <background> <text> <indicator> <child_border>

• child_border — the visible frame under default_border pixel. This is the field that does the work. Omit it and it silently inherits background.
• text / background — only render on tabbed and stacked titlebars ($mod+w / $mod+s). Invisible with pixel borders.
• border — the 1px outline around a titlebar. Also invisible with pixel.
• indicator — marks the edge where the next split will open, on the focused container only. Set to #8BB2B5, a teal notch on the near-white frame.

Tuning

• Frame too loud: default_border pixel 5 → pixel 3
• Focus still ambiguous: set focused_inactive identical to unfocused, so the desktop has two states instead of three
• Need a much stronger cue: default_border normal 3 turns on titlebars everywhere — a filled colored bar with text, at ~25px per window

Palette

There is no shared colorscheme file. The palette is hand-duplicated across .config/sway/config, .config/waybar/style.css, .config/mako/config and .config/fuzzel/fuzzel.ini. The nearest thing to a canonical definition is the @define-color block at the top of waybar’s style.css:

bg-dark     #0f1c1f   background
fg-light    #ffffff   foreground text
primary     #4F7A84   primary accent
secondary   #669299   secondary accent
tertiary    #8BB2B5   tertiary / highlight
muted       #8e9a99   muted / disabled

#cbdcdb is sway-only. #669299 is not used by sway. Changing a color means editing all four files.