Changing Default Background Color for File Explorer and Applicaions

Good Afternoon,

I have moved from FreeBSD to Win 10. The glaring white of the aforementioned objects is really painful to my old eyes. I cannot find references on Google about how to change this. I found one post that alleges this obnoxious color was hard coded.

Can someone please assist me in resolving this issue?

My desired colors for the background is (RGB) 235.235.235.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely and respectfully,

Dave

I followed the registry hacks in this post I found Online:

Ref: http://forums.wincustomize.com/470033/page/1/


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Hi, this allows you to set any colour you want for many of those bright whitish areas MS wants us to stare at: given that MS took away the dialogues that allowed control of this, this (other than WindowBlinds- when avaiable) is the only way now available.

This example is a pale yellow. You can choose anything you like.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors]
"Window"="250 250 177"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\Colors]
"Window"="250 250 177"

Imagine Wordpad, Notepad, your editor, many dialogue boxes all being easier on the eye. I'd upload an image but this site requires a URL.
It DOESN'T work for explorer, control panel and a number of system dialogues.
Note that it needs script support to refresh it (by reapplying the theme it's saved with) after resuming from hibernation.
I used this successfully in Win 8.1 and now in Win 10. Together with a theme to give coloured title bars, borders (adjustable width with "Tiny Windows Borders" (again substituting for the dialogue MS removed) to adjust border padding, and Aeroglass, and white caption text, Win 10 is usable visually.
Oh, and substitute for explorer - Free Commander, XYplorerer.... that allow you to colour columns etc.

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Then I auditioned a lot of replacement file managers with Cubic Explorer. Ref: Cubic Reality Software

Then customized the color to my preferences using one of their built in themes.

Now, only the occasional dialog has a white background, which I can deal with. My system is now close enough that it isn't searing my pupils shut.

MS needs to return the functionality of granular color control back to the user...like we all had in XP....Even '7 still had the hideous white background for the file explorer hard-locked. Unacceptable in my book.

My system no longer hurts my eyes....Important for us C/C++ coders.

Hope this helps others,

Sincerely and respectfully,

Dave

Hi,
I'm using my own theme for Window 10 as I was yesterday with Win7, this simply has my own choice of folder where I keep the images I want to see on my desktop background.

But my eyes are killing me, my head is splitting and my neck is dying trying to peer at the screen through the snowblindness MicroSoft is imposing on us all.
How can I return to a nice soft grey background in all my programs?
I've read this thread as well as I could and it seems to be saying that you can only change some of the backgrounds - is this correct? there's no longer a way to change the searing white to a grey for all applications/programs?

If this is true, then why do MicroSoft hate us all so much?
Surely, there must be a solution?
(Linux maybe? But I'd have gone that route long ago if it would support all my programs properly.)

Help?

+1 for High contrast black theme.

I am looking for a way to change the windows's background colors and the menus ( the desktop right click etc menus ) colors ...

I can't believe I forgot the simplest method: just find a solid color to use as your desktop background, the only file in a folder so it never changes.
I used a photo of the Sun and cropped it as a rectangle in Photostudio so it fills the screen. You could make your own desktop using Color Fill in a photo editing program.