How to include BackgroundPatternColor or HighlightColor in a Word Style definition?

Since the Highlight color palette in Ms-Office/Word is very limited, in some Word documents we use BackgroundPatternColor to give the background color of the text.

Question:
I would like to define a custom Style as a spinoff of the Normal Style, that includes a custom background color.
In the Style definition dialogue I did not find any option where I can include the bgcolor of the selection. Any ideas?

Note: The only option close to that is the so called Border>Shading>Fill Color, but that always spans to the full line/paragraph, cannot be applied to less.

You can change the background color, but if you don't want it coloring the entire paragraph then you must create a character style and set the color for its .Font property.

(Note: you could also create a so-called "linked" style, that can be use for both paragraph and font formatting, but these are generally frowned upon in professional documentation circles.)

Here's an example

Sub ChangeStyleColor()
    Dim styl As word.style
    Dim stylName As String
    Dim color As word.WdColor

    stylName = "fontBlueBackground"
    color = wdColorAqua

    ' the style might not exist - if not, create it
    On Error Resume Next
    Set styl = ActiveDocument.styles(stylName)
    On Error GoTo 0

    If styl Is Nothing Then
        Set styl = ActiveDocument.styles.Add(stylName, word.WdStyleType.wdStyleTypeCharacter)
        styl.BaseStyle = word.WdBuiltinStyle.wdStyleDefaultParagraphFont
    End If

    CharStyleBackgroundColor styl, color

End Sub

Sub CharStyleBackgroundColor(styl As word.style, color As word.WdColor)
    styl.Font.Shading.BackgroundPatternColor = color
End Sub