Change default material color or properties?

First of all, the way this forum is designed SUCKS. If you type a bunch of stuff in this field and then change the "Conversation Type" radio button above, it erases everything. Brilliant web programming Adobe.

Now, is there a way to change the color or properties of the default material? If not this is ludicrous. This material shows as a glossy white material, which is a real pain the ass if your model also requires a similar material to actually be created on parts of it -- a situation I am currently dealing with, with a very complex model with a lot of small parts. I need to be able to see at a glance what has been painted and what hasn't.

Yes, I KNOW I can go into "Base Color" mode, or create a colored fill layer at the bottom of my stack. But these are both inconvenient workarounds, and the latter simply adds bloat to an already large project file. There should be a way to either turn off the default material completely in fully shaded mode, or change its color to something obvious like bright red.