Is a call to InitCommonControlsEx() such as:

INITCOMMONCONTROLSEX icc;
icc.dwSize = sizeof(INITCOMMONCONTROLSEX);
icc.dwICC = ICC_STANDARD_CLASSES; // the right one?
InitCommonControlsEx(&icc);

needed in a presence of a following manifest:

#pragma comment(linker,""/manifestdependency:type='win32' 
name='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls' version='6.0.0.0' 
processorArchitecture='*' publicKeyToken='6595b64144ccf1df' language='*'"")

The Win32 application uses a dialog as a main form and does not explicitly create any windows inside the main function. The dialog currently holds only buttons. Without the call to InitCommonControlsEx, there are currently no compilation errors or warnings and the application seems to function without problems.