I run Ubuntu 12.04 Precise. A year ago through Advanced Settings or dconf
I set my Icon Theme to Faience-Ocre and my Windows Theme to Adwaita Cupertino L Unity. I kept the GTK+ Theme as Adwaita (default).
This morning I was surprised to see Nautilus had reverted back to Icon Theme ubuntu-mono-dark and Radiance Window Theme (both Ubuntu default) while every other application still uses the [dconf] org gnome desktop interface settings i.e. Faience-Ocre Icon Theme and Adwaita Cupertino L Unity Window Theme.
Also when launching Nautilus in Super User mode via
gksu nautilus
Nautilus looks as before, the way I want it.
I went to /usr/share/icons/
and renamed the ubuntu-mono-dark theme as ubuntu-mono-dark.bak . This caused Nautilus to instantly use the gnome icon theme ...
I don't understand what is going on. Why did the Icon theme revert to default ubuntu-mono-dark in Nautilus only for the user? In the mean time I will use another File Manager.