 <p>Following the tip by @Tomasz Kowalczyk using the example xaml <a href="https://forums.xamarin.com/discussion/34798/how-to-add-global-background-color-style" rel="nofollow">from this rather incomplete post</a>:</p> <p>In app.xaml ResourceDictionary put this style:</p> <pre><code>&lt;Style x:Key="defaultPageStyle" TargetType="ContentPage"&gt; &lt;Setter Property="BackgroundColor" Value="#f8f8f8"/&gt; &lt;/Style&gt; </code></pre> <p>The base class is called <code>BaseContentPage</code></p> <pre><code>public class BaseContentPage : ContentPage { public BaseContentPage() { var style = (Style)Application.Current.Resources["defaultPageStyle"]; Style = style; } } </code></pre> <p>Then to tie it all together in each xaml.cs class:</p> <pre><code>namespace MyNamespace { public partial class MyXamlPage: BaseContentPage </code></pre> <p>And .xaml file</p> <pre><code>&lt;local:BaseContentPage xmlns="http://xamarin.com/schemas/2014/forms" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2009/xaml" xmlns:local="clr-namespace:MyNamespace;assembly=MyNamespace" x:Class="MyNamespace.MyXamlPage" </code></pre>