# Why might dark-light-choose() not work?

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-might-dark-light-choose-not-work/172232
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [December 4, 2020, 10:14am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-might-dark-light-choose-not-work/172232 "2020-12-04T10:14:41Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 2

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### Author: ![awesomerobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/awesomerobot/32/142900_2.png) [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2020, 3:02am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-might-dark-light-choose-not-work/172232/2 "2020-12-05T03:02:24Z")

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I believe, due to the way the SCSS is compiled, custom dark/light definitions need to be added to `color_definitions.scss` within a theme and won’t work in other scss files.

 ![Screen Shot 2020-12-04 at 9.54.13 PM](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/1/b/1bcf071375070d293ec39a5444b00f34b8beb06d.png)

`color_definitions.scss` is high up in the cascade (before a lot of the default styles), so you don’t want to add the `.modal.history-modal ins` part there. Instead you can just add the color definition itself…

```scss
$dark-theme-ins: #acf2bd;
$light-theme-ins: #4da06d;

$ins: dark-light-choose($light-theme-ins, $dark-theme-ins);

:root {
  --custom-ins: #{$ins};
}

```

and then in common or any of your theme’s other files you can do:

```css
.modal.history-modal {
    ins {
        background: var(--custom-ins);
    }
}

```

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