My current project consists of 56 commandbuttons that I reguarly change the picture-property on, either when the user clicks on it or when the status changes for the app, the status is checked every 100ms.

It represents the stage-floor in an operahouse, the commandbuttons are the hatches in the floor and the user chooses wether to open or close them by clicking on them.

The app is begining to perform slow, should I consider changing the commandbuttons to image or pictureboxes.
If I remember correctly pictureboxes takes less memoryspace.
Would that speed up my app, or actually does loding a picture into an image or picturebox go faster than loding an image into a commandbutton?

All suggestions appreciated.