JTabbedPane selection color

Question

is it possible to change the default JTabbedPane selection color? (light gray)
It doesnt seem to give you the ability to set a Renderer

Answer 1

If altering the UI for your JTabbedPane is an option for you then this becomes pretty easy, just override the "paintTabBackground" method of BasicTabbedPaneUI. This isn't an option for a lot of people though... since that would pretty much limit you to one UI.
Otherwise you will have set the background of the tab manually... the following code is an example of how to do this... unfortunatly... MetalTabbedPaneUI overrides the paintTabBackground method and DOESN'T use the manual backgrounds for selected tabs, it ALWAYS uses the default selectedColor from the UIManager... looks like an oversite to me... anyway... this code works fine with the Windows Look and Feel...
import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.event.ChangeListener;
import javax.swing.event.ChangeEvent;
import java.awt.*;
* <pre>
* SBTabbedPane
* </pre>
public class SBTabbedPane extends JTabbedPane {
     private Color tback;
     private int tsel = -1;
     private Color sback;
     public SBTabbedPane() {
          addChangeListener(new ChangeListener() {
               public void stateChanged(ChangeEvent e) {
                    redoback();
     public void setSelectionBackground(Color c) {
          sback = c;
          redoback();
     private void redoback() {
          if (tsel >= 0) {
               setBackgroundAt(tsel, tback);
          int i = getSelectedIndex();
          if (sback != null && i >= 0) {
               tback = getBackgroundAt(i);
               tsel = i;
               System.out.println("SET BACK: " + tsel + ": " + sback);
               setBackgroundAt(tsel, sback);
     public static final void main(String[] args) {
          try {
               UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());
          } catch (Exception e) {}
          SBTabbedPane test = new SBTabbedPane();
          test.setSelectionBackground(new Color(255,0,0));
          test.add("Tab 1", new JLabel("HELLO"));
          test.add("Tab 2", new JLabel("WORLD"));
          JFrame testframe = new JFrame("Test Window");
          testframe.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
          testframe.getContentPane().setLayout(new BorderLayout(0, 0));
          testframe.getContentPane().add(test);
          testframe.pack();
          testframe.setVisible(true);
}Hope this helps a little...
Josh Castagno
http://www.jdc-software.com