Each panel area on the home page (if you’re using the sectional home page option) has an id, #panel1, #panel2, etc. So you can use CSS that targets that selector
For example, to make the 2nd panel have a light blue background,
article#panel2 {
background: lightblue;
}
To add CSS: use the “Additional CSS” option in the customizer. https://codex.wordpress.org/CSS#Custom_CSS_in_WordPress
Learn to use the Chrome Developer Tools to help you see and test changes to your CSS.
Steve, thanks. Being rather new at this, how would I know what ids exist that I can customize through CSS if you hadn’t told me? Is it all documented somewhere?
Look at the page sourced. It may be documented, but I always start by looking at the page’s source and using the browser’s inspector.