Seperti Windows XP, ikon asas Aero's yang direkakan oleh The Iconfactory[2].

Hingga keluaran Windows Vista Beta 1 pada Julai 2005, little or nothing had been shown of Aero in public/leaked builds. Previous user interfaces were Plex, which was featured in Longhorn builds 3683-4029; Slate, which was featured in build 4051 and was available until build 4093; and Jade (build 4074, 4083 and 4093, actually an early preview of Aero). Microsoft started using Aero in public builds in build 5048. The first build with full-featured Aero was build 5219. Build 5270 (released in December 2005) contained an implementation of Aero which was virtually complete, according to sources at Microsoft, though a number of stylistic changes were introduced between then and the operating system's release.

Asasnya, Aero was to have three levels available, one code-named "To Go", which had the Desktop Window Manager (DWM) composition engine (previously known as DCE) disabled. The next was to be AeroExpress, lacking many features of the highest level code-named Aero Glass. However, in December 2005, Microsoft announced that there would only be two levels available, "Windows Vista Aero" and "Windows Vista Basic", with the previous "Express" level integrated into the new "Windows Vista Aero" level. A control panel was added to enable the user to fine tune this functionality, such as being able to turn off the "glass" translucency effect. These levels are provided so that the Aero interface (to some extent) can be used with a relatively low-end graphics card.

Initially, a variation of Aero, codenamed "Aero Diamond", was slated to be the user interface for the Windows Vista Media Center experience. Although there has been no official mention of Diamond for a number of years, it may refer to the expectation that the interface will be written in pure XAML (as was Aero initially) but this has not been confirmed.