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Are you taking about Mandelbulber or Mandelbulb 3D? If M3D, I used to start with the completely grey palette, unchecked the sticky sliders on Object colouring and changed one in the heap on the right side to a contrasting colour (mostly red). Then I started sliding the contrasting patch up and down the palette to see what it did. If I didn't like it, I adjusted the colour start and end sliders and tried again, until I got a feel for the change in colours and found something I liked. Then I changed the colour to something that was more befitting the scene and continued with the other patches. The next phase is changing to ambient and play with the ambient and fog settings. if fog doesn't work like you think it should, reducing the far plane or Zend will often work create a more foggy effect.

There's more I can tell you (loads!), but before I continue, it would be nice to know if we are talking about the same program and if the aforementioned helps...

Please look at image below, which describes possibilities for coloring of Mandelbox fractals