Thank you everyone for your assistance. I haven't been in Delphi for a few years now, so I take it I wasn't using TButton then
1. Use TCustomButton from the Cutsom Drawn Control
http://wiki.freepascal.org/Lazarus_Custom_Drawn_Controls: Great start. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to customize the bevels and the edges.
2. Use fpGui or MSEGui. Both are great suggestions and are worth every consideration. Unfortunately, I've got too much invested already in this app to move over right now. Maybe later.
3. Use BCRA: It's a bit overkill for someone who just wanted to change the color of a button's face. On the other hand, its great for theming. I wasn't planning to theme my app but I'll be doing that now. I've toyed with it over the last few days and I'm getting the hang of it.
So, once more, thank you all for your support and your help. I would suggest though (and I'll add it as a suggestion) to turn the Color of a TButton int a read-only property, but come to think of it, the object inspector does not support read-only properties, does it now? But that's a question for another day.