By skyforbes 
Note-taking has become an essential part of productivity, and thanks to Obsidian, it’s now more enjoyable and efficient than ever. Obsidian has become popular for its flexibility, markdown-based structure, and powerful features.
One of the best things about Obsidian is the ability to customize it. You can put in the extra effort to create your own Obsidian theme, but Obsidian’s active community has already developed dozens of themes you can install with a click.
These themes offer a package of customizations to give your vault a fresh look and even boost your productivity.
What Good Are Obsidian Themes?
Obsidian themes are an excellent way to personalize your note-taking experience and make it more enjoyable. These themes are like a layer of paint on your digital canvas. They influence your Obsidian vault’s color palette, typography, and overall design.
Themes also contribute to your notes’ readability and organization. Properly designed themes use contrasting colors, typography, and spacing to ensure that your notes are easy to read and navigate. At the very least, if you like how your Obsidian vault looks, you’d be more inclined to work in it.
Whether you prefer a minimalist look, a subtle color palette, or a more vibrant interface, there’s an Obsidian theme to suit your taste. You can easily install Obsidian themes from your vault’s settings or by following the GitHub link to download the files.
Without further ado, here are the ten best Obsidian themes to improve your note-taking experience.
The Minimal theme is the perfect fit if you prefer a clutter-free workspace. The theme strips away distractions and provides a clean canvas for your notes. The Minimal theme emphasizes clear typography and ample blank space, allowing your thoughts to take the stage.
The theme is accompanied by the Minimal Theme Settings plugin. You’ll need to install the plugin to customize the color schemes, fonts, hotkeys, and access the theme’s feature toggles.
Prism is a colorful theme that adds a touch of vibrancy to your Obsidian vault. The theme supports both dark and light modes and has five color schemes for each mode. The Style Settings plugin is necessary for this theme to run correctly and also unlocks the customization features.
Prism’s vibrancy isn’t apparent from the start. That’s because the primary source of color in this theme is its highlight functionality. Once you set up Prism, you can use the tag to highlight text strings.
Things is a theme that mimics the popular Things app’s design. If you feel at home with Things’ blend of elegance and functionality, this theme can help you extend that feeling to Obsidian.
The Things theme also offers extra functionalities for lists in Obsidian. You can add specific characters between the brackets to add symbols to your Obsidian list and better visualize them.
The theme has both light and dark modes. Considering the Things app’s default look, this theme looks best in its light mode.
Inspired by the popular Nord color palette, the Obsidian Nord theme brings a soothing and harmonious design to your vault.
Obsidian Nord combines soft pastel colors with crisp typography, creating a calming atmosphere that’s easy on the eyes. Obsidian Nord supports dark and light modes but doesn’t include any customization options.
If you spend a lot of time on Discord and Obsidian, then it only makes sense to unify the looks of the two apps. Since you can’t thoroughly customize the looks of Discord, the Discordian theme is here to make Obsidian feel like Discord.
The Discordian theme not only changes the colors to the Discord color palette, but also changes the dimensions and margins of elements to mimic Discord’s interface. The theme is accompanied by the Discordian plugin, which lets you customize it.
The Sanctum theme is all about serenity and focus. With a muted and calming design, this theme is perfect for those who want to stay focused and relaxed during note-taking sessions.
Sanctum is compatible with the Style Settings plugin and offers tons of customization options. You can also add new functionalities like highlighting text backgrounds and adding a divider line under headings.
Everforest is one of the oldest Obsidian community themes. Based on the Everforest color palette, this theme brings earthy tones and calming greens to your Obsidian vault.
Everforest also supports semantic HTML tags. However, since it predates the Style Settings plugin, its customizability ends with the two dark and light modes.
Dekurai caters to users who prefer dark-mode interfaces. It employs deep colors to create a moody neon-like environment for your notes.
This theme is essentially the second version of the Dark Moss theme. Similar to its predecessor, Dekurai emphasizes contrast and readability. This makes Dekurai an ideal choice for users who work during nighttime hours or simply prefer darker themes.
If you think that Obsidian can’t get any more minimalist than it already is, Shimmering Focus is here to prove you wrong. This theme’s minimalism isn’t just a change to the color palette. Shimmering Focus gives Obsidian a complete redo to make it even more minimal, changing everything a theme possibly can.
The theme changes the colors and fonts, hides the UI elements, and reduces the padding and margin between the elements to the bare minimum.
Despite its aggressive minimalism, Shimmering Focus also adds a bunch of new functionalities to Obsidian. To name a few, code blocks are improved to display line numbers; images can be zoomed in, and the alt text displays under them as the caption.
For those who feel nostalgic for the analog days, the Typewriter theme offers a delightful blend of old-school charm and modern functionality. This theme recreates the monochromatic aesthetics of typewritten documents, complete with vintage fonts and subtle textures.
The Typewriter theme is perfect if your notes primarily involve writing, particularly in the literary field. Typewriter offers dark and light modes. It’s compatible with the Style Settings plugin, although it doesn’t offer much customization through Style Settings.
Go Beyond the Default With Obsidian Themes
When it comes to digital note-taking, customization is vital to creating a workspace that resonates with your preferences and enhances your productivity. Obsidian themes offer an excellent gateway to personalization.
Themes allow you to transform your note-taking environment into a reflection of your style and workflow. Whether you’re drawn to minimalist designs, vibrant colors, or nature-inspired schemes, there’s a theme out there to suit your taste.
Moreover, most of these themes are compatible with popular Obsidian plugins like Kanban. So why not give them a try and see how everything looks together?