# Giving a custom style a colored gradient background

In Mathematica, customizing Sections, Subsections, Titles and so on, can be done with Format > Style > .... Changing the background color of a style is one of the things you can do. Here is an example where I have colored the background orange:

But I want to change the background to show a color gradient. I mean, instead of having the same orange in all of the background, there should be a gradient so the orange fades from top to bottom. Gradient styles will be found in Palettes > Color Schemes. But I can't get it to work for changing the color of a cell background.

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I don't know if it's possible to specify a gradient background (it may be in recent versions, but I don't think it is in v7 -- which I use). Nevertheless you can specify a bitmap fill for full control: (6318) – Mr.Wizard Jun 4 '14 at 10:45
– Dr. belisarius Jun 4 '14 at 12:52
@belisarius Crikey! =:-O – Mr.Wizard Jun 4 '14 at 12:56
@goldberg, thank you for your editing. – Unbelievable Jun 4 '14 at 13:55

I'm not sure how exactly to integrate this with a stylesheet background, but here is a way to achieve gradients using Graphics:

Overlay@{
Graphics[
AspectRatio->1/2,
ImageSize->Full],
Graphics[
AspectRatio->1/2,
ImageSize->Full]}


EDIT

I stumbled on a different way to do this that would be easier for simple layouts (tidied up with kguler's suggestion):

Graphics[{
Polygon[
{{0, 0}, {1, 0}, {1, 1}, {0, 1}},
VertexColors -> {Yellow, Yellow, Green, Green}],
Text[

You can do without Overlay putting Text[..] and Polygon[...] in a single Graphics: Graphics[{Polygon[{{0, 0}, {1, 0}, {1, 1}, {0, 1}}, VertexColors -> {Yellow, Yellow, Green, Green}], Text[Style["Gradient!", FontSize -> Scaled@.2], Scaled[{.5, .5}]]}, ImageSize -> Full, AspectRatio -> 1/2] – kglr Jun 6 '14 at 19:28