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 "/^sleep/a \ \\/sbin\\/vtcol --scheme '$VTCOL_SCHEME' || true" /tmp/initrd-tree-"$kernel"/init mkinitrd -k "$kernel" -f ext4 -r /dev/disk/by-uuid/ -u \ -o /boot/initrd-"$kernel".gz -s /tmp/initrd-tree-"$kernel"