How to de-uglify i3-wm

lxapperance will do what you want for i3.

You also want QT, GTK 2.0, and GTK+ to look the same as your chosen theme.

Install:

1. lxappearance
2. gtk-chtheme
3. qt4-qtconfig

These applications allow you to configure the theme, QT, and GTK to have the same appearance. (They are good if you don't feel comfortable getting into GTK engines or editing a bunch of config files, and they run independent of Gnome!)

sudo apt-get install lxappearance gtk-chtheme qt4-qtconfig

Start with lxappearance and choose a theme; then choose it in gtk-chtheme. In qt4-config, there is a dropdown menu setting to make qt take the GTK+ settings. That seems to work best for me. (It makes VLC and KeepassX look good.)

As for applets, the Network Manager applet is the most important one. In your i3 config file, add this line to the end:

exec --no-startup-id nm-applet

In your web searching, when you find other applets you'd want to start, you do it exactly the same way:

exec --no-startup-id <applet name>

When you logout and log back in, the Network Manager applet should appear on the lower right.

All of the suggestions that I am giving represent only my opinion and one may or may not agree with them.

1. One of the best tutorials, on ricing (de-uglifying) your i3 can be found in this youtube video
2. Further, you should also install i3-gaps, its absolutely beautiful.
3. You should also checkout the reddit /r/unixporn for amazing ideas for ricing your i3.

I was trying to solve the same issue and found a direct solution to what was being asked about here, namely the i3 window borders.

From a blog post @ http://hndr.me/blog/making-my-new-linux-less-ugly/

client.focused          #3F8AC2 #096BAA #00BAA7 #00DA8E
client.focused_inactive #333333 #5F676A #ffffff #484e50
client.unfocused        #333333 #424242 #888888 #292d2e 
client.urgent           #C10004 #900000 #ffffff #900000

Are lines to append to ~/.config/i3/config that control the foreground and background colors of i3's window titlebars.

Change the font with "font" (it's likely already there). It's recommended to use pango for better font renderings. For example, I use the following:

font pango: Dejavu Sans Mono 14

while the linked blog uses

font pango: Ubuntu Mono 10

Additionally you could add another 'font' line within the 'bar {} ' block to use a different font in the status bar. For example of what that may look like:

bar {

    status_command i3status
    position top
    font pango: sans 12

     colors{
           background #232323
           statusline #DCDCDC
    }

}