[TheMilkCarton]

Those two boxes are completely different tables in the search template, and you have no need for if conditionals.

You simply need to create another "tcat" class, call it "tcat2" and change the background image. Then you just need to change the style for that td to tcat2, etc.

Like so:

    <td class="tcat2">
            $vbphrase[errors_occured_with_search]:
    </td>

<td class="tcat3">
        <if condition="$show['searchthread']">$vbphrase[search_thread] - <a href="showthread.php?$session[sessionurl]t=$threadinfo[threadid]">$threadinfo[title]</a><else />$vbphrase[search_forums]</if>
    </td>

the entire tcat CSS looks like this:

.tcat
{
    background: #162756 url(../../images/gradients/gradient_tcat3.gif) repeat-x top left;
    color: #FFFFFF;
    font: bold 10pt verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
    padding:6px;
}
.tcat a:link, .tcat_alink
{
    color: #ffffff;
    text-decoration: none;
}
.tcat a:visited, .tcat_avisited
{
    color: #ffffff;
    text-decoration: none;
}
.tcat a:hover, .tcat a:active, .tcat_ahover
{
    color: #FFFF00;
    text-decoration: underline;
}

So just make a duplicate of that, change all the "tcat" to tcat2, tcat3, whatever, and then change the colors, fonts, and images to your liking. This will of course go inside the Additional CSS Definitions in your style manager.