Programmatically select a row in JTable

You can do it calling setRowSelectionInterval :

table.setRowSelectionInterval(0, 0);

to select the first row.

It is an old post, but I came across this recently

Selecting a specific interval

As @aleroot already mentioned, by using

table.setRowSelectionInterval(index0, index1);

You can specify an interval, which should be selected.

Adding an interval to the existing selection

You can also keep the current selection, and simply add additional rows by using this here

table.getSelectionModel().addSelectionInterval(index0, index1);

This line of code additionally selects the specified interval. It doesn't matter if that interval already is selected, of parts of it are selected.

You use the available API of JTable and do not try to mess with the colors.

Some selection methods are available directly on the JTable (like the setRowSelectionInterval). If you want to have access to all selection-related logic, the selection model is the place to start looking