This is frustrating.
No matter how I set the interface preferences, when I make a new artboard, that artboard is white.
The brain-dead workaround to this is to put a rectangle the colour I want on a locked background layer and make it the same size as my artboard, but this turns "Shift+O, drag" into "Shift+O, drag, M, drag, set desired fill colour, deselect rectangle, restore previous fill colour and tool and selection."
It seems like there should be an interface option somewhere that lets me set the colour of new artboards, but the only guidance I can find on setting the artboard colour says to use "simulate coloured paper." Simulating coloured paper is not setting the colour of your artboard. It is simulating the way ink always lets some of the paper colour show through.
I do not want my artboard to show through. I simply want it to be a different colour. When I press Shift+O and drag out a new artboard, I want that artboard to be the same colour. If I decide I would like a different colour, I want to change a single setting somewhere and have the colours of all artboards in the document change at once.
I cannot find any setting for this in the interface. Am I missing something, or is it just not there?