vtcol can be used in /etc/rc.d/rc.local to set the colour scheme at boot: vtcol --scheme solarized_light It is also possible to add it to your initrd to have the colour scheme set early in the boot process. Example: kernel=4.4.38 mkinitrd -c -k "$kernel" -f ext4 -r /dev/disk/by-uuid/ \ -m ext4: -u -o /boot/initrd-"$kernel".gz \ -s /tmp/initrd-tree-"$kernel" install -m 755 /usr/bin/vtcol "/tmp/initrd-tree-$kernel/bin/vtcol" sed -i '159i \/bin\/vtcol --scheme solarized_light' /tmp/initrd-tree-"$kernel"/init mkinitrd -k "$kernel" -f ext4 -r /dev/disk/by-uuid/ -u \ -o /boot/initrd-"$kernel".gz -s /tmp/initrd-tree-"$kernel"