Top 10 Free Resources for Background Patterns and Textures for Web Designers

Quite often we stumble on to a blog that looks bland, in dire need of some color, a little bit of character, these sites maybe aren’t very familiar with blog design, let alone CSS. The simplest way to freshen up a site is with a new theme or to do a little CSS tweaking with your current theme. You could be surprised with the results. In this article I will show you the best resources for backgrounds and textures.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with CSS, here is a brief tutorial on how to change your themes background:
1. Download and save your background tile to your images folder stored in your root directory.
2. Open the style.css file in any text editor, or navigate to presentation / theme editor and select style.css from your Wordpress Control Panel.
3. Locate the body tag (should be the first tag you see).
4. And then change the background to: background: url(images/pattern.png) repeat; And then save changes.

Were it says pattern this is the name you give to your pattern tile and the .png is the format in which your pattern comes in ( could be: .jpg, .png, .bmp, or .gif). And then you good to go.

…below are a list of my Top 10 Free Resources for Background Patterns and Textures for Web Designers.

1. Din Pattern (www.dinpattern.com/)

Website: Din Pattern
This site was created bt Evan Eckard, he started making patterns as a hobby and then professionally. He has made his amazing patterns available for free download.
Have a look there is a style for everyone. You can browse and leave a comment.
Its a great looking site as well, worth a bookmark.

2. Squidfingers (www.squidfingers.com/patterns/)

Website: http://www.squidfingers.com
These patterns were has designed by a Professional Graphic Designer with many years experience. This shows in the style of the patterns, absolute quality and flawless. Free download (only a requested linkback required) them all.
He used to have a great javascript section, wonder what happened to it.

3. Kaliber 10000 (www.k10k.net/pixelpatterns/)

Website: http://www.k10k.net
A few years back this was the best design site going, with at the time possibly the best site design ever seen, time may have caught up with Kaliber in terms of design, but its content (especially patterns) is still excellent.
You can browse, download and even submit your own pattern. Well worth a look.

4. milleseicentopercento (http://www.noqta.it/dromoscopio/)

Website: http://www.noqta.it/dromoscopio/
Simple page layout, one page full of great patterns. Top notch as well.

5. Tile Machine (www.tilemachine.com/)

Website: http://www.tilemachine.com/
Nice site with some very original pattern and background designs. There is even a “Tile Machine” to create your patterns and have them submitted into the gallery. Good fun making your pattern.

6.Everyday Icons (www.playground.everydayicons.jp/)

Website: Everyday Icons
This is a lovely Flash site, with its white backgound and light green borders, it makes it simple for navigation. The patterns are great as well, allowing you to get a full page preview of each pattern.

7. Citrus Moon (www.citrusmoon.typepad.com/patterns/)

Website: http://citrusmoon.typepad.com
This site is in a blog with each pattern broken down via archives and categorised in type (neutral,green, grey etc.). Nice patterns as well.

8. Samurai Shizoo (www.shizoo.frozen-media.de/patternsets.php)

Website: http://shizoo.frozen-media.de
This is site has a bit of everything, patterns, backgrounds, icons, brushes… The only downside is that its written in german (I don’t speak a word). Still easy to navigate, and the patterns are very diverse, from the conservative to the outrageous.

9. Alice Grafixx (www.alice-grafixx.com)

Website: http://alice-grafixx.de
There are 33 pages of patterns here, if you can’t find one you like here, you’re not going to find one anywhere. This is another site written in german, but doesn’t detract from the quality.

10. Koller Media (www.kollermedia.at/index.php/pattern4u/)

Website: www.kollermedia.at
The patterns are broken down into the following categories: lined, dotted, squares, classic, dirty, funky and real. Fantastic variety, from the simple to the complex. worth a click.

There are a lot of sites that offer patterns and backgrounds, these are in my opinion the best.

34 Comments so far

1. Adam Foster on January 19, 2008 6:47 am

   Great Stuff. All saved as facourites for future use.

2. Ed on January 21, 2008 2:37 am

   nice collection, thx!

3. Jurgen on January 21, 2008 11:31 am

   Thanks for sharing! Love it!

4. skarld on January 24, 2008 8:35 pm

   Great resources. I was playing with some of these a couple of weeks ago (the Tile Machine is a great way to kill some time) but you have a lot of others that I have not seen.

   Personally, I think patterns in backgrounds are going to become a hot design element within the blogging community.

5. Red on February 7, 2008 12:36 pm

   Cool site. I’m actually in the process of testing out some of your patterns. thanks!

6. AmeyJah on March 6, 2008 6:07 am

   Squidfingers is really good site, as I am using it since last three months. And everyday icons site is also good. Overall good collection of designers tools

   Keep it up

7. Jim on March 7, 2008 5:55 pm

   Nice website I seen this website where you can download some nice clean textures for practice http://www.textureheaven.co.uk/

8. Aaron on March 11, 2008 10:12 am

   This is something I was looking for. Thanks! I posted the list on http://listdid.com. you should post your lists in the future on listdid.com
   - Aaron

9. Shaman on March 21, 2008 5:43 am

   Don’t forget http://onepattern.com/us
   They make beautiful vector pattern swatches for use with adobe illustrator.

10. Michael on April 30, 2008 7:13 am

    Hi, Just a quick note to say that this is a very well presented and useful site.

    Michael

11. Ellise on May 8, 2008 6:11 am

    Heyy x
    I Found Thisss Site We Can Use At Schoool (:
    Woooop =P

    Heyy Shannon (;

    Wb xxxxx

12. Harvey Rayner on May 19, 2008 5:46 am

    here’s a new one to add to your list speckyboy!

    http://patterncooler.com

    Add your own colors to contemporary and retro pattern designs, or browse from thousands of pre-colored seamless background patterns.

    nice blog btw

13. sergii on June 6, 2008 8:33 pm

    Here is another site, not from top ten but could be useful http://bgpatterns.com, there you can design patterns yourself

14. ghazii on June 7, 2008 9:38 am

    very nice stuff. Thanks

15. me on June 7, 2008 6:51 pm

    Don’t forget this one:

    http://www.lizaphoenix.com/tiles/

16. Alex on June 12, 2008 9:44 am

    That´s what i´ve been searching for. Thanks

17. Paul on June 15, 2008 11:56 pm

    Hi
    You should also check out www.texturebank.com there are loads of great textures and backgrounds on the site ;-)

18. Rita on July 10, 2008 11:18 pm

    Thanks for sharing. Very nice site.
    :)

19. nalurita on July 16, 2008 12:16 am

    thanks for sharing, makes me easier to find those great stuff, nice work :)

20. Reginald Pulliam on July 21, 2008 9:52 pm

    Nice list of pattern sites. I’d like to add my own new pattern site: http://www.hipandtwendy.com/

21. Подарки для мужчин on August 4, 2008 11:23 am

    Неплохо конечно, неплохо

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