Remove space between left ListView border and column items

Question

I colored a few items of the first ListView column by

foreach (ListViewItem lvi in listView.Items)
{
    lvi.UseItemStyleForSubItems = false;

    lvi.SubItems[0].BackColor = Color.DarkMagenta;
}

and try to get rid of the outlined gap between the left ListView border and the column items.

Setting listView.Padding has no effect, ColumnHeader class has neither a BackColor property nor a Margin property which could be set below zero.

Answer 1

Owner-Drawing will let you paint the whole Item background as you like.

listView1.OwnerDraw = true;

Here is a simple, minimal example:

private void listView1_DrawItem(object sender, DrawListViewItemEventArgs e)
{
    using (Brush brush = new SolidBrush(
            (e.State.HasFlag(ListViewItemStates.Focused)) ? 
            SystemColors.Highlight : e.Item.BackColor))
        e.Graphics.FillRectangle(brush, e.Bounds);
    e.DrawText();
}

Note that once you owner draw the item you will aslo need to owner-draw the sub-items and the headers, even if you just use the defaults:

private void listView1_DrawSubItem(object sender, DrawListViewSubItemEventArgs e)
{
    e.DrawDefault = true;
}

private void listView1_DrawColumnHeader(object sender, DrawListViewColumnHeaderEventArgs e)
{
    e.DrawDefault = true;
}