I don't want anything flashy, just something you hardly even notice but doesn't look tacky. For example even when I set a different color for my borders, it seems to only affect the outside border whereas inside cells still have a tacky basic black trim to them. I don't know much about design as you can prolly tell, but I would love to tackle this simple problem.
There are multiple parts to table borders. I guess you have just been applying css style to the table? For the cells themselves you need to apply css style to the td element. Have a look at http://www.tizag.com/cssT/border.php it should give you some examples that you can use to understand things. Have fun.
Like ched said, it's easiest to do with CSS. Assign the <table> tag and each <td> its own class (<table class="table1">) then define each class in your stylesheet and assign styles such as borders.... table.table1 { border: dashed 1px; } or whatever you want.