The standard MS ListView Control for WinForms will use the default color set by your Windows Theme to display selected and unselected rows' BackColor. And, the ListView color behavior used will vary depending on whether the ListView Control has focus.
There's a good analysis of this issue here: [
^].
So, as you may have noted, your custom BackColor setting for a ListView row may be ignored.
Your choices are to creates your own custom ListView and do all the painting yourself (prepare to be busy for a long time), or, you could use the excellent custom ListView here on CodeProject by Philip Piper, which is now up to version 2.6 as of July. 2012 [
^].
Philip has been developing this ListView since 2006, and is still actively responding to CP members' questions !