So, i've used setBackground (Color.white) on each of the Panels, and this works. But, there are still areas around these panels that are unaffected and remain the hideous java-gray.

Dynamic Color Scheme Generator This repository is a library, ready to use of Google material color utilities. You can check their github for the full documentation. For example, it provides a utility ...

For a concrete example, Alexei Chmelev’s Java Curses Library (JCurses) offers a JNI-based implementation that uses curses on Unix and Win32 to provide a platform-independent text windowing toolkit.