The appearance settings used to paint the Card View's elements (buttons, cards, field values, etc.) are specified by the Appearance property. If these settings are not specified or not used (the corresponding appearance options are disabled) the elements are painted based upon the look and feel settings.
The PaintAppearance property allows the appearance settings which are actually used to be obtained. This can be especially useful when custom painting the View's elements.
For more information on appearances, see the Appearances Overview document.