Change border color in TextBox C#

To change border color of TextBox you can override WndProc method and handle WM_NCPAINT message. Then get the window device context of the control using GetWindowDC because we want to draw to non-client area of control. Then to draw, it's enough to create a Graphics object from that context, then draw border for control.

To redraw the control when the BorderColor property changes, you can use RedrawWindow method.

Code

Here is a TextBox which has a BorderColor property. The control uses BorderColor if the property values is different than Color.Transparent and BorderStyle is its default value Fixed3d.

using System;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Windows.Forms;

public class MyTextBox : TextBox {
    const int WM_NCPAINT = 0x85;
    const uint RDW_INVALIDATE = 0x1;
    const uint RDW_IUPDATENOW = 0x100;
    const uint RDW_FRAME = 0x400;
    [DllImport("user32.dll")]
    static extern IntPtr GetWindowDC(IntPtr hWnd);
    [DllImport("user32.dll")]
    static extern int ReleaseDC(IntPtr hWnd, IntPtr hDC);
    [DllImport("user32.dll")]
    static extern bool RedrawWindow(IntPtr hWnd, IntPtr lprc, IntPtr hrgn, uint flags);
    Color borderColor = Color.Blue;
    public Color BorderColor {
        get { return borderColor; }
        set { borderColor = value;
            RedrawWindow(Handle, IntPtr.Zero, IntPtr.Zero,
                RDW_FRAME | RDW_IUPDATENOW | RDW_INVALIDATE);
        }
    }
    protected override void WndProc(ref Message m) {
        base.WndProc(ref m);
        if (m.Msg == WM_NCPAINT && BorderColor != Color.Transparent &&
            BorderStyle == System.Windows.Forms.BorderStyle.Fixed3D) {
            var hdc = GetWindowDC(this.Handle);
            using (var g = Graphics.FromHdcInternal(hdc))
            using (var p = new Pen(BorderColor))
                g.DrawRectangle(p, new Rectangle(0, 0, Width - 1, Height - 1));
            ReleaseDC(this.Handle, hdc);
        }
    }
    protected override void OnSizeChanged(EventArgs e) {
        base.OnSizeChanged(e);
        RedrawWindow(Handle, IntPtr.Zero, IntPtr.Zero,
               RDW_FRAME | RDW_IUPDATENOW | RDW_INVALIDATE);
    }
}

Result

Here is the result using different colors and different states. All states of border-style is supported as you can see in below image and you can use any color for border:

Download

You can clone or download the working example:

• Download Zip
• Github repository

You have to draw text manually as well.

protected override void OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e)
{
    base.OnPaint(e);
    Pen penBorder = new Pen(Color.Gray, 1);
    Rectangle rectBorder = new Rectangle(e.ClipRectangle.X, e.ClipRectangle.Y, e.ClipRectangle.Width - 1, e.ClipRectangle.Height - 1);
    e.Graphics.DrawRectangle(penBorder, rectBorder);

    Rectangle textRec = new Rectangle(e.ClipRectangle.X + 1, e.ClipRectangle.Y + 1, e.ClipRectangle.Width - 1, e.ClipRectangle.Height - 1);
    TextRenderer.DrawText(e.Graphics, Text, this.Font, textRec, this.ForeColor, this.BackColor, TextFormatFlags.Default);
}

Alternatively you can try to use e.Graphics.DrawString() method if TextRenderer is not giving you desired results (I always have better results with this approach thou).