How to change the color of ProgressBar in C#

This tutorial shows you how to change the color of ProgressBar in C# Windows Forms Application.

You can use Win32 API to change Progress Bar style as the following c# code.

public static class ProgressBarColor
{
    [DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = false)]
    static extern IntPtr SendMessage(IntPtr hWnd, uint Msg, IntPtr w, IntPtr l);
    public static void SetState(this ProgressBar p, int state)
    {
        SendMessage(p.Handle, 1040, (IntPtr)state, IntPtr.Zero);
    }
}

Drag some progress bar controls from the visual studio toolbox to your windows forms application as shown below.

To use it, you can call:

ProgressBarColor.SetState(progressBar1, 2);

Remark the second parameter in SetState

• 1 = normal (green)
• 2 = error (red)
• 3 = warning (yellow)

Or you can custom Progress Bar control by creating a new class then inheriting the ProgressBar class.

namespace CsharpCode
{
    public class CustomProgressBar : ProgressBar
    {
        public CustomProgressBar()
        {
            this.SetStyle(ControlStyles.UserPaint, true);
        }

        protected override void OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e)
        {
            Rectangle rec = new Rectangle(0, 0, this.Width, this.Height);
            double scaleFactor = (((double)Value - (double)Minimum) / ((double)Maximum - (double)Minimum));
            if (ProgressBarRenderer.IsSupported)
                ProgressBarRenderer.DrawHorizontalBar(e.Graphics, rec);
            rec.Width = (int)((rec.Width * scaleFactor) - 4);
            rec.Height -= 4;
            LinearGradientBrush brush = new LinearGradientBrush(rec, this.ForeColor, this.BackColor, LinearGradientMode.Vertical);
            e.Graphics.FillRectangle(brush, 2, 2, rec.Width, rec.Height);
        }
    }
}

Don't forget to add using to the below namespace.

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Drawing.Drawing2D;

To create a custom ProgressBar you need to override the OnPaint method, then add the code following to change your ProgressBar color.

progressBar.ForeColor = Color.FromArgb(125, 0, 0);
progressBar.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(170, 0, 0);