Thanks everyone! Yeah, I was afraid it was just straight from the global system settings. Too bad I can't change those for just one app... there's too many other apps that look totally screwy if I go for a system-wide dark scheme. Oh well.

You may need to write a hook and detect when VS is launched, but there's nothing to stop you creating a small app to set the background colour of that window.

If you're using Visual Studio 2010 and not the express version, you could try this add-in from Microsoft.

Quote: Original post by px
If you're using Visual Studio 2010 and not the express version, you could try this add-in from Microsoft.

Of all the colors that add-in can change, this isn't one of them :)

They actually posted on the MSDN forums or blog that you can't change some window colors. If I remember correctly this was due to them porting most of the IDE over to WPF but didn't have time to get everything changed. Which is why you don't currently have control of that elements color.