The visual appearance of every grid element as well as the overall appearance of the grid can be modified by setting various properties such as BackColor and Font or by using stylesheets. 

The properties of each grid element that affect the visual appearance of the element (or the grid) are ambient. A property is considered to be ambient when its value has not been explicitly set and is therefore retrieved from its parent. For more information on ambientness, jump to the Ambient properties topic.

Stylesheets

Although the appearance of each grid element can be modified, it is also possible to change the overall appearance of the grid using stylesheets. A stylesheet (either one of the predefined stylesheets or a newly create one) can be applied to the grid using the ApplyStyleSheet method. It is important to note that the stylesheet will be applied only to elements that are currently in the grid.   If elements are added to the grid after a stylesheet has been applied, they will not take on the properties of the stylesheet until it is reapplied. For more information on how to use stylesheets, jump to the Stylesheets topic. For information on how to create your own stylesheet, jump to the How to create a stylesheet topic. 

The grid also exposes a DataRowTemplateStyles property/collection which allows you to change the appearance of the DataRows in the grid. For example, if you only want to alternate the appearance of the DataRows in the grid, you can add VisualGridElementStyles to the DataRowTemplateStyles property/collection rather than creating a stylesheet. Of course, the same can be accomplished with stylesheets by assigning new VisualGridElementStyles to the DataRows property/collection. For more information on using DataRowTemplateStyles, jump to the DataRowTemplate styles topic.