Controlling Spacing Between Table Cells

Solution 1:

Use the border-spacing property on the table element to set the spacing between cells.

Make sure border-collapse is set to separate (or there will be a single border between each cell instead of a separate border around each one that can have spacing between them).

Solution 2:

Check this fiddle. You are going to need to take a look at using border-collapse and border-spacing. There are some quirks for IE (as usual). This is based on an answer to this question.

table.test td {
  background-color: lime;
  margin: 12px 12px 12px 12px;
  padding: 12px 12px 12px 12px;
}

table.test {
  border-collapse: separate;
  border-spacing: 10px;
  *border-collapse: expression('separate', cellSpacing='10px');
}

<table class="test">
  <tr>
    <td>Cell</td>
    <td>Cell</td>
    <td>Cell</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Cell</td>
    <td>Cell</td>
    <td>Cell</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Cell</td>
    <td>Cell</td>
    <td>Cell</td>
  </tr>
</table>

Solution 3:

table.test td {
    background-color: lime;
    padding: 12px;
    border:2px solid #fff;border-collapse:separate;
}

Solution 4:

To get the job done, use

<table cellspacing=12>

If you’d rather “be right” than get things done, you can instead use the CSS property border-spacing, which is supported by some browsers.