Bug 454165

Created attachment 149081 [details]
Commented screenshot of colors in dolphin with the oxygen color theme

Recent versions of dolphin (after correction of bug #181437) introduced alternated colors in the folder view (left pane) similar to what already existed in the contents views (right pane). This indeed improves readability. However the combination of colors used do not play well with the Oxygen (clear) color theme, resulting in a sharp contrast between successive lines, while the alternation is generally expected to be a slight change in tone.

Using the names from KColorSchemeEditor and value for the Oxygen color scheme (see attached screenshot):
Right panel (list of files), the colors are: "Common colors / View Background" (white) and "View / Alternate background" (light gray #f8f7f6). 
Left panel (folders), the colors are: "Common colors / Window Background" (gray #d6d2d0) and the newly introduce alternate is "View / Alternate background" same as in the right panel.

While the right panel alternates between "view background" and "alternate background" which are both light in tone, the left panel alternates between "window background" (darker) and the same (very light) alternate as previous, resulting in sharp contrast while alternating colors in lists should be subtle (see last comment of Nate Graham in bug #354868).

It is not apparent with dark themes, and apparently in Breeze it also does not create problems (because the Window background is lighter than in Oxygen).

Without changing the functionality, it would be nice if the alternating color of the left panel would be selected to another item among the the color theme. This change would be likely make no visual difference to users of darker themes where all items are dark. It does make a lot of difference to Oxygen users because the view color is white while the window background is quite a bit darker.

You might ask why do I not change the window background. I think the problem is not from Oxygen, which is a beautiful color theme that works well in all applications. I think this issue here results from the choice of items in the palette specifically for this feature in dolphin, and the problem is only exposed when using the Oxygen color theme.