<p>I have a form that I would like to style. specifcally I would like to chnage the background color of the form item's label. (the backgorundColor attribute changes both the label and the inputs background color)</p>

<p>i.e.</p>

<pre>
<code>
&lt;mx:Form>
    &lt;mx:FormItem label="username:">
        &lt;mx:TextInput />
    &lt;/mx:FormItem>
&lt;/mx:Form>
</code>
</pre>

<p>I would like to make the label with 'username:' have a different background color, but have the text input still be the default background color. </p>

<p>is this possible with a FormItem ?</p>

Try using the flex style explorers to create your desired style:
Flex 3 Style Explorer
Flex 2 Style Explorer
I used the TextArea in the style explorer and formatted the background color which gave the following css output:
```
```
TextArea {
   backgroundColor: #0000ff;
}
```
```
You can change this to the following to include in you stylesheet:
```
```
.formLabel {
   backgroundColor: #0000ff;
}
```
```
Then in the FormItem tag:
```
```
<FormItem label="Label" styleName="formLabel" />
```
```
More info on Flex Style Sheets:
Flex Style Sheets
These examples will show that you can declare styles within the mxml Style tags rather than an external style sheet if you would like.