I know how to do this via Terminal > Preferences, but this seems to require opening a new console. I'd like to change the background color on the current console. Is this possible?
Menu: Shell > Show Inspector (⌘I)
Double-click on the desired setting. Naturally you'll have to add your desired colour scheme using Preferences first.
You can create a command you can enter in Terminal like I suggested in a similar topic.
You can do this from the command line too, with a command such as;
tput setab 6
clear
This changes the background to a teal colour.