Separating main container and sidebar widget.

Hello mercedescarter23,

Hope you’re well! 🙂

The main and sidebar section are separate by default. It is just their parent element was the one use to set the background color. I suggest you use a child theme http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes or use css custom plugin like this: https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-custom-css/ if you will customize your theme.

Here is the code ( I left comment for better explanation ) you can put on your child theme’s style.css or use the plugin mentioned above:

/*
remove the bg color - this is the parent of main and sidebar element so if you put a color on this the two will be affected
you can also put a color on this element while main and sidebar have their own color. RESULT: http://prntscr.com/5pg7ng
*/
.container {
	background-color: none;
}

/* this element can have its own bg color */
#content {
	background-color: red
}

/* this element can have its own bg color */
#sidebar {
	background-color: green
}

Hope it helps! 🙂

Take care,
Calvin