I bounce back and forth between Sublime Text and Atom. Apropos of nothing, I realized that my color scheme's text selection color was only barely doing it's job. Take a look:

Terrible. Here's what I settled on to replace it:

It provides much needed contrast, but not an eye-scorching amount.
Here's how I made the change (on a mac):
- Figure out which color scheme is selected by opening preferences (⌘ + ,) and note the path for
color_scheme. For me that wasPackages/User/SublimeLinter/Monokai Phoenix (SL).tmTheme. - Go to
~/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text 3/<your_theme>. - Open the .tmTheme file in an editor.
- Find the
<key>selection</key>line. In the line below that one, change the hex code to the desired color. - Save the .tmTheme file and Sublime will pick up the change.