The only way I know of to set any background is to use icon view & set a colour or picture…
_{(Click for larger images)}

The only way to have it permeate down the hierarchy would be to set as default – but that will not constrain it to any given hierarchy, so you would be better to just set each manually, or create each top folder, set default; create the folder hierarchy, then repeat with another colour for another hierarchy.
Somewhat unwieldy, either way.