[StavrosK]

I have filed a bug that was closed about this very thing. Bootstrap is very hard to customize because the variable color names are inane. Rather than define a palette of X many colors and then use that everywhere, bootstrap defines variables as @gray, @pink, @white, etc. If you want a light-on-dark layout, you need to redefine @gray as white, which makes no sense.

I proposed names like @primaryColor, @primaryColorLight, @secondaryColor, etc, but the tickets were closed. Yes, it's a lot of work, but it must be done. If you can define your four colors and have Bootstrap look entirely different, it goes a long way to instant customization.

[dminor]

That's a shame - this is my main complaint about bootstrap. If you do plunge ahead and do a bunch of color customization, it also makes upgrading to new versions a pain.

[danneu]

I didn't even notice the LESS variables and built a dark theme in about 20 minutes by cascading over Bootstrap vanilla. Upgrading isn't an issue as long as you make customizations in a separate file that you simply include after bootstrap.css.

http://danneu.com/darkstrap/darkstrap.html

[StavrosK]

Actually, to give credit where it's due, I just downloaded the 2.0 release and it seems like things are much better. Still not at the point I'm describing, but at least the end classes aren't littered with @gray declarations.