Excerpt from my blog at http://anoori.me/
Las week, I mentioned I tried to switch over to Windows 8, but I couldn’t do so because it was so bright for me. After a couple of days, I upgraded some parts of my PC and since I wanted to check out the UEFI booting speed of Windows 8, I figured I’d give it another shot.
After installation, I knew that I have to make my OS dark, so, after installing drivers and basic software, I set out to make my OS as dark as possible.
The "Advanced Color and Appearance Settings" dialog isn’t there, but there are programs that are using it, so I head over to the beloved regedit and changed it through Windows Registry. Here is the key:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors] 
I changed some colors, logged off and logged on again, started Microsoft Words and voila! It was dark. Good.
I started Photoshop and checked the best background for both dark and bright foreground texts. Turns out, it’s [55,55,57] in RGB format. Here’s the photo I’ve created:
As you can see, it tests the background against all kinds of foreground. I changed my all keys in the regedit and in case you’re interested, here's a copy for you to download. Just double click on it and restart your windows. (It works on Windows 7 too).
This made most of my OS dark, after that I set my Aero color to black and changed all the font size settings in
Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Display to 11, clicked Apply to get a bigger font my OS.
I changed my Office theme to "Black", my Visual Studio to "Dark" theme, the Notepad++ to "Obsidian", etc.
The only remaining part was my Windows Explorer. I couldn’t change it without a Visual Style so for now, I’ve customized the NexusFile and using it as my primary file manager. It’s simple, has a black theme, it’s customizable and it has tabs. Here is a screenshot of it.
In addition to all these changes, I use f.lux for a while now. It changes your monitor's light depending on time of day. It's so awesome. I strongly recommend it. It is free and also available for Mac/Linux and iOS.
I'm using my Windows 8 for a week now. I just have some minor issues with it but in general I LOVE IT, more than Windows 7. It’s blazing fast. You should definitely try it.
