# Styling HTML Tables with CSS

> Learn how to style HTML tables with CSS now that Grid and Flexbox handle layout, adding borders, spacing, and striped rows with the nth-child selector.

Author: [Flavio Copes](https://flaviocopes.com/about/) | Published: 2019-06-02 | Topics: [CSS](https://flaviocopes.com/tags/css/) | Canonical: https://flaviocopes.com/css-tables/

Tables in the past were greatly overused in CSS, as they were one of the only ways we could create a fancy page layout.

Today with Grid and Flexbox we can move tables back to the job they were intended to do: styling tables.

Let's start from the HTML. This is a basic table:

```html
<table>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th scope="col">Name</th>
      <th scope="col">Age</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <th scope="row">Flavio</th>
      <td>36</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th scope="row">Roger</th>
      <td>7</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
```

By default it's not very attractive. The browser provides some standard styles, and that's it:

![Basic unstyled HTML table showing Name and Age columns with three rows of data](https://flaviocopes.com/images/css-tables/Screen_Shot_2019-04-10_at_08.08.59.png)

We can use CSS to style all the elements of the table, of course.

Let's start with the border. A nice border can go a long way.

We can apply it on the `table` element, and on the inner elements too, like `th` and `td`:

```css
table, th, td {
  border: 1px solid #333;
}
```

If we pair it with some margin, we get a nice result:

![HTML table with CSS borders applied showing structured grid layout with black borders around all cells](https://flaviocopes.com/images/css-tables/Screen_Shot_2019-04-10_at_08.27.47.png)

One common thing with tables is the ability to add a color to one row, and a different color to another row. This is possible using the `:nth-child(odd)` or `:nth-child(even)` selector:

```css
tbody tr:nth-child(odd) {
  background-color: #af47ff;
}
```

This gives us:

![HTML table with alternating row colors showing purple background on odd rows for striped effect](https://flaviocopes.com/images/css-tables/Screen_Shot_2019-04-10_at_08.33.41.png)

If you add `border-collapse: collapse;` to the table element, all borders are collapsed into one:

![HTML table with collapsed borders showing seamless grid without gaps between cells](https://flaviocopes.com/images/css-tables/Screen_Shot_2019-04-10_at_14.36.28.png)