In case you haven't seen it yet, Gmail now has themes. And most of them are very nice. If you log in at your Gmail account and got at Settings you will see a new link called Themes.
Just click it and you will see many themes available.Click the one you like and...here you go, you have a new way to view your emails.
If you don't like any of them, you can click Classic and you will have the old style.
This feature has just been added by Google so you should expect a few bugs. But as always I believe they will fix all the problems.
You can also find more Gmail themes at userstyles.org but you will have to install Stylish in order to display them.