Background Color not working

Hey guys, I'm having trouble with the background color of the bottom bar. I tried setting the attribute android:background="@color/white and it didn't work. Then I tried doing through the activity itself with bottomBar.getTabWithId(R.id.tab_name).setBarColorWhenSelected(whatevercolor) and that didn't do anything either, before this I tried setting it through the xml attribute but it also didn't work. So then I manually set the background color of the R.id.bb_bottom_bar_item_container, the R.id.bb_bottom_bar_icon, and the R.id.bb_bottom_bar_title, and while that changed the background of the bottom bar, it left the icon and title backgrounds intact except for the first one which was all white. So then I overwrote the BB_BottomBarItem_TitleStyle and that worked, except that now they're all white unless they're selected. I'm pretty sure I'm missing something simple but I don't know what it is. Any help would be appreciated, thank you.