Slashdot | Best Color Scheme For Coding, Easiest On the Eyes?: "I love Zenburn [vim.org]. I use it on all my machines now and at work.
But there is one thing you should do in your .vimrc prior to setting :colorscheme zenburn, and that is forcing the use of 256 colors:
:set t_Co=256
Also I found that the search highlighting wasn't visible enough for my taste, so I tuned it. After :colorscheme zenburn I have:
:hi search ctermbg=223 ctermfg=238
:hi incsearch ctermbg=216 ctermfg=242
And if you like to have a little more contrast, then insert the following before your :colorscheme zenburn:
:let g:zenburn_high_Contrast = 1
which together makes for this:
:set t_Co=256
:let g:zenburn_high_Contrast = 1
:colorscheme zenburn
:hi search ctermbg=223 ctermfg=238
:hi incsearch ctermbg=216 ctermfg=242"
