Why do vim's StatusLine and StatusLineNC do not have the same background color?

Question

With the same StatusLine and StatusLineNC highlight colors, when I open multiple windows, the active window's status line always has a lighter color text.

I'm using PuTTY, the TERM is set to "putty-256color" and I haven't modified the default PuTTY color configuration. "Bolded text is a different color" is checked.

If I add a cterm=reverse to the StatusLine, I do get a true black text, but it adds carets in my status line.

How can I get the same color for both status lines? Where did I go wrong?

without "reverse", active window on top

without "reverse", active window on top

Answer 1

By toying around I found my solution to be "cterm=italic" for the "hi StatusLine"