It's widely advertised that you can bind to any property of a control you'd care to. Getting it to actually work may be less than intuitive. This example binds the backcolor property of a label control based on color names stored in a database.

This ASPX code (note the Import statement at top of file): 












<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head runat="server">





    <form id="form1" runat="server">

      <asp:GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server" AllowSorting="True" AutoGenerateColumns="False"

        DataKeyNames="HourAvailability" DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1">

        <Columns>

          <asp:BoundField DataField="HourAvailability" HeaderText="HourAvailability" ReadOnly="True"

            SortExpression="HourAvailability" />

          <asp:BoundField DataField="Description" HeaderText="Description" SortExpression="Description" />

          <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="DisplayColor" SortExpression="DisplayColor">

            <EditItemTemplate>

              <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" Text=''>

            </EditItemTemplate>

            <ItemTemplate>

              <asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server" BackColor=''

                Text=''>

            </ItemTemplate>

          </asp:TemplateField>

        </Columns>

      </asp:GridView>

      <asp:SqlDataSource ID="SqlDataSource1" runat="server" ConnectionString=""

        SelectCommand="SELECT * FROM [TestingTable]">

    </form>

</body>

</html>

Produces this table:

HourAvailabilityDescriptionDisplayColor
0Unavailable red
1Can Work yellow
2Want to Work green
3Scheduled To Work blue
4Did Work purple