Mady1380 - You have to intercept the method called when the color of the controls is determined - OnCtlColor(). OnCtlColor is called each time a control is being painted/repainted. Examine nCtlColor to see what type of control is being painted. The following code makes the background of an edit control either yellow when it has the focus, or normal white when it does not have the focus. It also forces the text color to black. Add this method to your dialog class. BEGIN_MESSAGE_MAP(CMyDlg, CDialog) //{{AFX_MSG_MAP(CMyDlg) **ON_WM_CTLCOLOR()** //}}AFX_MSG_MAP END_MESSAGE_MAP() ... /**************************************************************** * OnCtlColor() ****************************************************************/ HBRUSH CMyDlg::OnCtlColor(CDC* pDC, CWnd* pWnd, UINT nCtlColor) { HBRUSH hbr = CDialog::OnCtlColor(pDC, pWnd, nCtlColor); if (CTLCOLOR_EDIT == nCtlColor) { if (GetFocus() == pWnd) { // Set the text color to black. pDC->SetTextColor(RGB(0, 0, 0)); // Set the background to YELLOW. pDC->SetBkColor(RGB(255, 255, 0)); // Set the background mode so background will show thru. pDC->SetBkMode(OPAQUE); return CreateSolidBrush(RGB(255,255,0)); // Yellow for active edit box } else { // Set the text color to black. pDC->SetTextColor(RGB(0, 0, 0)); // Set the background to WHITE. pDC->SetBkColor(RGB(255, 255, 255)); // Set the background mode so background will show thru. pDC->SetBkMode(OPAQUE); return CreateSolidBrush(RGB(255, 255, 255)); // White for inactive edit box } } return hbr; } Experiment to get a better feeling by changing background colors, text colors, types of controls (EDIT, STATIC, etc.). Hope this helps. Gary