In the back end, under Appearance > Theme Options, changing the configuration settings under both "Default page options for new pages, posts & portfolio items" and "Default page options for blog list" seems to have no effect on such pages.

Specifically, padding top, padding bottom, title text color, background color, icon settings, these settings when changed do not alter the new, posts or blog pages.

Note: That is NOT the case for the "Default page options for search results", which works fine; any visual setting change does affect how the search results page looks.