WPF - how to determine why this XAML style code is not working?

Since you've given the styles an x:Key . You need to explicitly set the style property of your items to use that style as a resource.

As SeeSharp says, Snoop allows you to view the object tree at runtime (and change values and see results etc). However, I think your problem here might be that you're not explicitly applying the style on the object.

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