Every so often, a wonderful thing happens: someone young enough to have missed out on using computers in the early 1990s is introduced to the Windows 3.1 “Hot Dog Stand” color scheme. Back in the day Windows was pretty plain looking out of the box, with grey windows and blue highlights as the default. A number of optional color palettes gave it a bit more pep, like the wine-tinged Bordeaux or the more sophisticated teal of Designer.
And then there was Hot Dog Stand, which more or less turned Windows into a carnival.
“The truly funny thing about this color scheme is that all the other Windows 3.1 color schemes are surprisingly rational, totally reasonable color schemes,” tech blogger Jeff Atwood wrote back in 2005. “And then you get to ‘Hot Dog Stand. Which is utterly insane. … I have to think it was included as a joke.”
Did Windows 3.1 really ship with a garish color scheme that was dared into being? That was a story I needed to hear, so I went digging for the credits of the Microsoft employees who worked on the user interface back then and found my way to Virginia Howlett, who joined Microsoft in 1985 as the company’s first interface designer, and worked there up through the launch of Windows 95.
Howlett also co-created the font Verdana, which is partially named after her daughter Ana and is up there with Helvetica as one of the most-used fonts of the last 30 years. But enough about her world-changing contributions to modern technology: we’re here to talk Hot Dog Stand.
“I confess that I’m surprised anyone cares about Windows 3.1 in late 2025! It was such a long time ago and the world has changed so much,” Howlett told me when I reached out over email. She confirmed that she and a “small team of designers” created Windows 3.1’s themes, which were a “radically new” feature at the time—prior to its release, you couldn’t customize different parts of the OS, like the backgrounds and title bars of windows, with different colors.
I asked if the designers at Microsoft really had included Hot Dog Stand as a joke, or if it was inspired by a particular stand they frequented near the corporate campus (hey, it was a longshot, but you never know). I’ll let Virginia tell the rest of the story:
As I recall there were 16 colors: white, black, gray, RGB, CMY, and the dark versions of those colors—so dark red, dark green, dark blue, dark cyan, dark magenta, dark yellow, dark gray. (Normal people might call some of these colors teal, navy, burgundy, etc.) Much of the user interface was black lines on a white background and used 2 shades of gray to create 3-D buttons: ‘affordances.’
We designed a long list of themes using those 16 colors. No one today seems interested in ‘Bordeaux’ or ‘Tweed’ or ‘Arizona.’ We were covering all the bases, hoping to come up with color schemes that would appeal to a broad range of people. ‘Hot Dog Stand’ used bright yellow and red.
I have been mystified about why that particular theme causes so much comment in the media. Maybe it’s partly the catchy name. (Never underestimate the power of a good brand name!)
I do remember some discussion about whether we should include it, and some snarky laughter. But it was not intended as a joke. It was not inspired by any hot dog stands, and it was not included as an example of a bad interface—although it was one. It was just a garish choice, in case somebody out there liked ugly bright red and yellow.
The ‘Fluorescent’ theme was also pretty ugly, but it didn’t have a catchy name, so I’ve never heard anything about it.
I’m really glad that ‘Hot Dog Stand’ has entertained so many people for so many years.
With regards to design historians everywhere,
Virginia Howlett
As delightfully garish as Hot Dog Stand is, Howlett is right that it’s far from the only eye searing theme in the Windows 3.1 collection. Check out Fluorescent and Plasma Power Saver:
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You can play around with Windows 3.1 in your browser thanks to the emulator PCjs Machines; if you get really into it, you can even customize every color yourself instead of relying on one of the preset themes.
So that’s that: Hot Dog Stand may have inadvertently served as a warning to aspiring theme customizers that madness was just a few overzealous color choices away, but that wasn’t its original intent. It wasn’t included on the floppy disks as a dare, or a joke—it just happened to end up one of the funniest and most memorable relics of Windows history.
Virginia Howlett recently guested on an episode of the design podcast Complementary, so give it a listen if you’d like to hear her talk about interface design and her time at Microsoft.