Ivory Garden

Ivory Garden

A warm, paper-light Obsidian theme built for long reading sessions. Ivory and cream backgrounds carry deep cocoa text, with a single cobalt blue accent and a signature muted gold glow for highlights — designed to feel like an ivory garden at golden hour.

Ivory Garden is a recolour of Minimal v9.0.2 by @kepano. All credit for the theme architecture, feature set, plugin compatibility, and Style Settings surface goes to Steph Ango. This repo only changes the color values.

Why Ivory Garden?

Most light themes default to pure white backgrounds with pure black text. After a few hours of reading, that's harsh on the eyes. Ivory Garden takes a different approach:

• Ivory paper, not white — backgrounds use #FAF5F0 (warm ivory) instead of #FFFFFF. Less blue light, less fatigue, more "printed book" feel.
• Cocoa text, not black — body text uses #3E2723 (deep cocoa brown) instead of pure black. The contrast is still excellent, but the page reads softer.
• A single cool accent — cobalt blue #0B68DA for links and interactive elements. Cool enough to stand out against the warm paper, saturated enough to read as deliberate.
• A signature gold glow — text highlights use muted gold #C49A3C, not yellow. The result feels like sunlight through bokeh, not a highlighter pen.

The dark variant (Midnight Garden) inverts the same palette: espresso-black backgrounds with warm ivory text, a lightened cobalt accent, and a brighter gold glow that survives the darkness.

Screenshots

Install

From Obsidian (after community directory approval)

1. Open Settings → Appearance → Themes → Manage
2. Search for "Ivory Garden"
3. Click Install, then Use
4. Toggle between light and dark via Settings → Appearance → Base color scheme

Manual install

1. Download the latest release .zip
2. Extract into your vault's .obsidian/themes/Ivory Garden/ directory
   • The folder name must be exactly Ivory Garden (with a space) — it must match the name field in manifest.json
3. In Obsidian: Settings → Appearance → Themes → Manage, then select Ivory Garden

Companion plugins (recommended)

Ivory Garden inherits Minimal's full feature set. For complete control over features like focus mode, table styles, tab styles, and color schemes, install:

• Minimal Theme Settings — adds a settings panel for all Minimal features
• Hider — hides UI elements for distraction-free writing
• Style Settings — exposes Ivory Garden's full Style Settings panel for granular color customization

Palette

Light mode (default)

Dark mode (Midnight Garden)

What's included

Because Ivory Garden is a Minimal recolour, you inherit the full Minimal feature set:

• Focus mode — auto-hides ribbon, tabs, status bar; reveals on hover
• Cards — Dataview tables and lists render as responsive card grids
• Image grid — adjacent images auto-arrange into a grid
• Table helpers — row/column lines, striped rows, row numbers, tabular figures, centered tables, and more
• Tab styles — default, square, underline, modern; sidebar variants
• Callouts — filled or outlined
• Embeds — strict, hide-title, underline
• Heading dividers — optional underline below H1–H6
• Tag styles — plain, bordered pill, rounded, square
• Image tweaks — #invert, #blend, #circle, #outline, #interface URL suffixes
• Plugin compatibility — Calendar, Charts, Dataview, Git, Kanban, Style Settings, Zoom, and more
• 14 preset color schemes — Dracula, Gruvbox, Nord, Solarized, Catppuccin, and more (Minimal's presets remain selectable for comparison)

What changed from Minimal

Only color values were changed. Specifically:

1. Base HSL — --base-h/s/l shifted to warm ivory (33°, 47%, 96%) for light, espresso (28°, 24%, 8%) for dark
2. Accent HSL — --accent-h/s/l set to cobalt blue (213°, 90%, 45%) for light, lightened cobalt (213°, 84%, 69%) for dark
3. Pinned palette values — --bg1, --bg2, --bg3, --ui1–3, --tx1–4, --ax1–3, --hl1, --hl2, --sp1 pinned to palette-exact hex values (Minimal's auto-derivation formula is bypassed)
4. Extended palette — --color-red through --color-pink shifted to earthy, painterly tones (muted brick, sage green, dusty rose, etc.)
5. Signature glow — --hl2 (text highlight background) set to muted gold #C49A3C at 35% opacity, brightened to #E2B860 in dark mode
6. Explicit scheme classes — .minimal-ivory-garden-light and .minimal-ivory-garden-dark added for parity with Minimal's other named schemes

Everything else — layout, feature modules, plugin styles, Style Settings YAML — is unchanged from Minimal v9.0.2.

Compatibility

• Obsidian 1.13.0+ (per minAppVersion)
• Tested on macOS, Windows, Linux, and mobile
• All Minimal-compatible plugins work unchanged

Demo vault

The /demo-vault folder contains sample notes showcasing headings, callouts, tables, code blocks, task lists, and Dataview examples. Open it in Obsidian with Ivory Garden enabled to see every feature in context.

Credits

• Minimal by @kepano — the entire theme architecture, feature set, plugin compatibility, and Style Settings surface. Ivory Garden would not exist without Minimal.
• Minimal Theme Settings — companion plugin for feature control
• Ivory Garden palette — designed by Ward Skaiker

License

MIT License — same as Minimal. Copyright 2020–2026 Steph Ango. The Ivory Garden recolour is by Ward Skaiker and is released under the same MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.