How To Change Folder Background Color in Windows 10

By default, the File Explorer in Windows 10 uses a white background color for the light theme and black background color for the dark theme. If you want to, you can change folder background color to match your taste. Here’s how.

Changing or customizing folder background color is particularly useful for those who don’t like the bright white color or the deep black color that is so prevalent in Windows 10 dark mode. For example, rather than the deep black color, it would be nice to see a kind of dark gray, at least for me.

So, if you are like me and would like to change the folder background-color to something more pleasing then follow the below steps and you should be good.

Change Windows 10 Folder Background Color

There are many ways to customize the folder background color. In fact, you can do it via a registry edit. However, the manual method is not only unintuitive but also hard and error-prone.

So, to deal with that, we are going to use a free software called QTTabBar. One of the best things about the software is that it has a variety of options to customize the File Explorer as want. For instance, you can add tabs, extra navigation bar with custom shortcuts, etc.

1. First, download QTTabBar from the official website and install it like any other Windows software.

2. After installing, open File Explorer, go to the “View” tab and click on the “Options” drop-down menu. Here, select the “QT Command Bar” option.

3. The above action will add a new navigation page to File Explorer. From the new menu, click on the “Settings” icon (gear icon).

4. As soon as you click on the icon, QTTabBar settings window will open. Here, select the “Appearance” tab on the left panel.

5. Now, on the right panel, go to “Folder View” tab.

6. Here, select “Base Background Color” and “Base Text Color” checkboxes.

7. This action will enable a few other options. Click on the “Choose a color” button and choose the color of your choice for both background and text.

8. Once you are done, click on the “Apply” and “Ok” buttons to save changes.

9. Finally, reboot the system. Generally, you don’t have to reboot the system to see the changes. However, if you can’t see the changes, either reboot the system or restart the Windows Explorer process.

Wrapping Up

As you can see, it is nothing hard to change File Explorer background color. If you want to, you can also customize other parts of File Explorer. Like the navigation pan, menu, toolbar, etc., with the color of your choice.

Just play with the software a bit and see what fits your needs. If you ever want to reset everything, simply uninstall the software and all changes will be lost. Simply put, File Explorer with revert back to normal.

Hope that helps. If you are stuck or need some help, comment below and I will try to help as much as possible.

If you like this article, do check out how to open multiple File Explorer Windows and how to remove the 3D Objects folder from quick access in File Explorer.