DevExpress does make good controls. As for style policies, they are implicitly described by the look and feel of the default controls. I personally dislike applications that go out of their way to look very different than all of the other Windows applications that I use (i.e., iTunes for Windows). Making things look a little nicer by writing your own controls or using third party controls is one things, and I realize that you may have no choice here, but I think that different applications should maintain some consistency in their look and behavior.