No, there is no way of changing the colour schemes in Office 2013 that I know of. I use Office 2013 & I just live with the existing schemes & don't let it worry me. The most important thing with any program is whether it will do what I want it to & not what colours can be used.
Colour matters a lot to me (when it is this unpleasant) so I hope someone eventually comes out with a third party hacked theme or something.
There are many people on many forums saying that they have gone back to 2010 due to the ugliness.
I am trying out f.lux now
https://justgetflux.com/
I'll help at night.
This has been a problem for users since Windows 7/Office 2007 and is never going to change. I'm sure that hidden away in the code is a simple way to add new colors but MS lost any empathy for their users a long time ago. Being stuck with whatever color scheme they care to offer is just their way of giving us the finger and showing us just who is in control. That's my rant about this.
I guess that there are a very large number of people in Redmond (30-40,000, 90,000 worldwide) who vaguely realise that they no longer create anything of utility, but rely for their income upon rent taking their past creation:, Windows and the Office suite (which was in large part a port of Lotus, Wordstar, Wordperfect and Apple writer).
I guess these 90,000 people justify this with thoughts along the lines of "We provide a stable platform for content creation" "Without us, the world of desktop office software would fall apart." Westerners are good at providing stable systems, so this kind or reasoning may be used in may in many areas, and it is not entirely untrue merely greatly overemphasised.
In order to ensure that they can keep charging rent it is important that we do not see the rent as rent but payment for creation of an "upgrade". In order for us to see Office-whatever as an upgrade, it is important that we notice change.
Hence, Microsoft does not allow the would-be-really-simple re-skinning or colour changing of their products lest there be a variety of looks and feels within any "upgrade" step, and thus far less of an awareness of the steps in the "upgrade" path. Microsoft wants us to be painfully aware that "Oh you have Office-whatever," "I still have Office-whatever-1." In that endeavour it is important that each step in the "upgrade path" be as recognisable and homogeneous as possible. Hence the lack of colour control. I think the lack of colour control is not simply sadism, but directed by rational economic self-interest.
Even more philosophically, Jacques Lacan, and perhaps Ernst Mach, argue that reality is simply the intersection of words and vision. There are no things in themselves but merely their illusion formed by this intersection of words and vision. In order to promote value and significance in one or other side, stability or even degradation of the other becomes important. I have argued elsewhere (!on my blog) that American obesity does not merely covary with their incredibly high linguistic self-esteem but helps to promote it. "I don't care about that (body, look). I am all into ideas (functional, thought = language). Thus the death dirge drab look of word 2013 may also promote positive impression of its functionality.
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