setting widget colours

[Nwanua Elumeze <nwanua makaha colorado edu>]

Hello all,

in my app, I've tried to set the background colours for the main window. 
Unfortunately, only the window displays in said color: a lime green window
but lists, buttons, optionmenus, etc still retain the grey default. How do I
make subsequent widgets inherit its parent's colour?
Which brings me to another point? I've been trying to set my colours to 
a dark grey colour, but all I can get is a sickly green, no matter how 
what strength of RGB I use:

color[0].red = x.x
color[0].green = x.x
color[0].blue = x.x


Hope someone can help,

TIA,

Nwanua.