Macos – Unexpected colors with solarized dark theme on emacs (blue background)

A couple of things to check:

1. In iTerm2, in Preferences -> Profiles -> Terminal, under "Terminal Emulation" you have "Report Terminal Type:" set to xterm-256color.

2. In your .vimrc, there are some options you can also set to make sure it's using 256 colors:

   set background=dark
   " solarized options 
   let g:solarized_visibility = "high"
   let g:solarized_contrast = "high"
   colorscheme solarized
   

   And one of those should work, but #1 first.

BUT, if you're using the default, built in vim on Snow Leopard, it won't work, as it's not built with support for 256 colors. I believe the built in version in Lion does.

Edit: Based on several comments on this answer, I've removed let g:solarized_termcolors = 256 line from the .vimrc example above. It appears that could be a problem for some. Another says that adding the line let g:solarized_termcolors = 16 fixed a color display problem. Your own mileage may vary.

Second Edit: If you've loaded the solarized color palette into iTerm2, then you must let g:solarized_termcolors=16. Only let g:solarized_termcolors=256 if you are not using the solarized palette as your iTerm2 color preset.

Maybe I'm not understanding something, buy why don't you run emacs like this:

TERM=xterm-256color emacs -nw

This way Emacs has its own TERM setting that you know works. You can also make an alias or wrap this in shell-script.