here is a regular <select> box look on firefox (osx):

if i add the following style to it:
form select.error {
background-color: #FFAAAA;
}
it looks like this:

question:
Is there any way to keep the pretty styling and still make it red?
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The “pretty styling” is all a single background image drawn by the OS. So when you override it, Firefox has to fall back to some other kind of styling…
So no, you can’t keep the original look but just change the background color.