Interesting "feature" in .Net Windows Forms 2.0 DataGridView. We have a DGV that is initialized in code. At the top of the initialization code is this statement: dgv.RowsDefaultCellStyle.ForeColor = Color.Black; dgv.DefaultCellStyle.SelectionBackColor = Color.MediumBlue; dgv.DefaultCellStyle.SelectionForeColor = Color.White; Then, columns are created and added: DataGridViewTextBoxColumn c = new DataGridViewTextBoxColumn(); c.Name = "Foo"; ... c.DefaultCellStyle.Format = "0.00"; c.DefaultCellStyle.ForeColor = Color.Red; c.DefaultCellStyle.SelectionForeColor = Color.Red; dgv.Columns.Add(c); Guess what? The text is not red. Unless it's selected, then it is red. In order to force the text to turn red, I have to do this, after the DataSource is set: foreach (DataGridViewRow r in dgv.Rows) { r.Cells["Foo"].Style.ForeColor = Color.Red; } Apparently, the column's DefaultCellStyle is ignored. Actually, it's overridden by the grid's RowsDefaultCellStyle, which is exactly backwards of what I would expect (RowsDefaultCellStyle and AlternatingRowsDefaultCellStyle should be higher up the override hierarchy, because they're more generic, describing an unbound range of rows, than a specific column's DefaultCellStyle). What's even more frustrating, is that sorting the grid causes the individual styles to be conveniently forgotten. So, I have to add that same loop (or, to be more proper, move the loop to a function, call it from the DataBind event, and add a call...) to the DataGridView's Sorted event. This was one of those problems that, once I figured out what was going on, only then was I able to google and find the articles that described it. And apparently it's not new, just news to me. I still find it backwards, requiring a whole lot of extra work to make it behave the right way; and thus I reserve the right to complain.