Download color-theme. http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki?ColorTheme http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki?ColorTheme Choose one of the included themes that

Download color-theme. http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki?ColorTheme http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki?ColorTheme Choose one of the included themes that you like the most, and start customizing. Personally, I like zenburn. http://www.brockman.se/software/zenburn/zenburn.el http://www.brockman.se/software/zenburn/zenburn.el But that might be a bit heavy to start off with. Or, the shortcut way, define some stuff in custom-set-faces. e.g.: (custom-set-faces ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom. ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful. ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance. ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right. '(paren-face-match-light ((t (:background "#5f5f5f" :foreground "#e37170" :weight ultra-bold)))) '(paren-face-match ((t (:background "#5f5f5f" :foreground "#e37170" :weight ultra-bold)))) '(paren-face-mismatch ((((class color)) (:background "#332323" :foreground "#e37170")))) '(paren-face-no-match ((((class color)) (:background "#332323" :foreground "#e37170")))) '(linum ((t (:foreground "#5f5f5f"))))) Of course, this all requires that your Django/Python mode has a face for the {% ... %} stuff. I've never done any Django work, so I'm not sure if it does. If it doesn't, you'll have to hack at the Django/Python mode some to define that face so you can color it.