When you say customising windows, the best approach I have found is not to try and customise the actual window but just set the window border and background etc to transparent. Then use another control to act as your Window (but your window is still there of course, its just invisible) - for example using a Border then you can set things like the corner rounding and a nice gradient etc and put whatever you want inside the border to make it look like a window border (like I have done in this app: http://www.vbforums.com/showpost.php...3&postcount=42 )