I discovered a "color-scheme paradox": Every color scheme I enjoy using avoids using color red for anything except error messages -- which seems to be objectively a good thing -- yet such color schemes are rarely the most popular ones, which I attribute to the fact that the preview screenshots that do not use the color red look unappealing.
I'm in the same boat that you, I just can't use any color schemes where red is used to denote keywords, variables etc. I just don't understand why red dominates in so many color schemes.