Where can I find textures and background images?
If you are a graphic designer, you probably know that textures and background images are essential for every project which is related to graphics or design. But where to search for quality images if you can’t find anything usable on your PC?
Web offers many useful resources one should always keep in mind searching for textures. Below you’ll find a hand-picked selection of some useful resources related to textures and background images. We tried to pick the best ones which offer quality and professional content without annoying advertisement.
Following repositories offer “free” textures, which means that you can use them for both personal and commercial projects according to the license mentioned on the web-site you’ve downloaded the images from. The images in this article have been taken from the sites described in this list. Links checked: May/25. 2008
- Dr. Web Textures
Dirty Brick Walls, Wood, Stone, Grafitti and more… free to use for any project, personal or professional. - Absolute Cross
Free Seamless Background Textures – over 500 hundred free seamless textures.

- Amazing Textures
amazing textures – free hi res images to download and use in 3d modeling and animations - Background City
free backgrounds, wallpapers and textures - BEN CLOWARD
An archive of free texture maps for use in 3D animation

- Beta-Soft.Net
Over 500 Free Textures - Blender Texture Cd
This is the collection of textures and materials of the “Blender Texture Disk” – “The Blender Foundation has now decided to open up this content entirely as public domain. - CGTextures
Photo textures for 3D artists and game developers

- Citrusmoon
Free Patterns, Tiles, Backgrounds - FreeFoto.com
Free Pictures – Picture of Textures. Here you will find over a three hundred pictures of various textures. Bark, Brick, Cobbles, Curves, Glass, Light, Paint, Pebbles, Stone, Tarmac, Water, and Wood. - gallerie1
Free Textures 
- Image*After – free textures
Free high resolution textures. free for commercial and personal news. Daily updates - PlanIt 3D
Free 3d models textures - repeatXY – Find your tileable background image
A big collection of finest tileable background images for use in web pages. Download for free. Easy, fast and comfortable preview of every image. Searchable by colors.

- Spiral Graphics
Free Tiling Texture Materials – Genetica Texture Packs are high quality collections of royalty-free seamless textures. - 2D Valley Gallery
Free Photoshop resources and more for the 2D artist - Squidfingers / Patterns
169 Patterns

- TextureWarehouse | Free Texture Images
Free, High Resolution Textures to Designers and 3D Artist. Iimages are licensed under a Creative Commons License - The Limelite – Textures
A portfolio of free textures…. - TextureKing
Throughout this site you will find a growing repository of high quality stock photos that are free for professional and personal use.

- Texture Library
Another free library of textures - Tirad
You are welcome to use these textures in your works…. - WebGround
Thousands of original background textures for your Work.





Joe Martinez
January 2nd, 2007 5:26 amAnother great article. Well done.
Allen Herman
January 2nd, 2007 10:13 pmThank you for the great resource!
Ryan
January 18th, 2007 10:21 amgreat post, I must have thousands of textures saved on my computer but I’m ALWAYS looking for more. I do a ton of grunge and realistic style design, thus…there is no such thing as too many.
Thanks for the links!
Jack Evans
February 10th, 2007 2:31 amAnother great site that I use all the time is Stock*Xchng. A free registration gets you access to a huge number of free-for-download stock photos, many of which make great textures.
Piyal Kundu
March 6th, 2007 5:04 pmMy favourite website for high quality textures is deviantart.com. Lots of high rez textres can be downloaded for free.
Donna Kilmore
February 14th, 2008 6:23 pmA great site for fantastic background stock photography for websites and any project such as Powerpoint or even press is a site called backgroundshed.com. They don’t require a subscription or the purchase of credits. Really nice stuff.
Jim
March 7th, 2008 5:14 pmGreat site for new and fresh textures
pixelcore
March 12th, 2008 11:03 amGreat resource. thanks
Thijs Visser
April 8th, 2008 11:56 amGreat. Will sure come in handy for my upcoming grunge website!
Thanks!
Me
June 23rd, 2008 11:08 pmwhat about http://www.free-seamless-textures.com
MUSK
July 18th, 2008 7:06 amIt’s really a nice site n keep it up:::?
where can i buy
August 12th, 2008 1:16 amHi webmaster!
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August 18th, 2008 3:28 pmHi webmaster!
Matt
December 19th, 2008 2:40 amA nice selection of resources and useful information. thanks.
I know of a good source for YouTube backgrounds that work with other sites to, available for free download with no spam.
Get cool Free YouTube Backgrounds that fit their new Wide Format now at CustomYouTubePage.com. Click here: CustomYoutubePage.com
MUSTAFA
January 13th, 2009 7:37 pmThank u for this great websit
vanapalli paparao
March 2nd, 2009 10:57 pmExcellent Site.Its very helpfull to us.
INVICTRA
April 17th, 2009 11:19 amGreat site.
Milamber
August 7th, 2009 10:13 amA spam free site for seamless texture backgrounds. Worth checking out.
Link
Severi Brandt
August 27th, 2009 3:57 amGreat links! Thanks!
Architex2010
January 25th, 2010 12:54 pmGreat set of links. Cheers!
Another texture site to ad to the list:
3D Textures
felix
February 11th, 2010 8:54 pmhere is another site with free textures (no membership required) http://textures.creatiif.net
Alex
February 14th, 2010 6:45 amHere is another one: http://www.4freetextures.com
Jeff
February 18th, 2010 4:18 pmI’m giving away over 25 free texture photos at http://findjeffandsusan.com – new free public domain photos we’re creating being released every day.
info
February 23rd, 2010 5:26 pmWe just moved to our new domain and textures.creatiif.net is now http://www.texturecafe.com! Please update your bookmarks. New free sets of textures are released in our new blog. Thanks for looking.
Martin
March 14th, 2010 6:30 amhttp://www.isourcetextures.com/
We are a growing texture stock site and have over 6000 free high resolution textures aimed specifically at CG, 2D and 3D artists like ourselves.
Our free textures can be used for almost anything (including commercial projects) Except the re-distribution “as” texture files modified or not.
Or alternatively, you can pay as little as $1.00 for the license to use our textures in your own artwork as derivatives. This also includes commercial texture creation.
We are already the number one texture resource for many personal and commercial texture artists, 3D artists and game developers.
We take a lot of time and effort in creating our texture stock, so whether you work with 2D or 3D software for business or pleasure, our licensing covers both types of use.
Please refer to the EULA/User License tab on the website for full details.
Registration is free and simple and you can start downloading today!
Luce
April 22nd, 2010 9:28 pmThe ones from “Squidfingers / Patterns” are weird. There’s download link under each thumbnail that lets you download a zip file. But the images inside the zip are really tiny, 38×40 px etc. Is it just me?
Nataasha
October 31st, 2011 9:46 pmIt’s because they’re designed to then be tiled on the website
Wink
July 5th, 2010 9:32 amI offer free background images on symmetricalbackgrounds.com/ . The images are set up in galleries with thumbnail pages. The thumbs lead to a display page that uses the image for a background so you can get a better idea of what the image will look like in use.
designer
July 23rd, 2010 4:16 pmtexturemate.com looks very promising!
Craig Pennings
August 6th, 2010 11:59 pmhttp://www.web30textures.com is another great texture resource to add to your list, great collection.
v
September 12th, 2010 11:39 amhttp://www.plaintextures.com is another one and is for FREE
DmitriyTL
November 19th, 2010 7:58 amNew free texture library!
http://www.texturelib.com
Phillis Tiotuico
December 9th, 2010 2:54 amI’m not a fan of coffee. I love this one – very bright, smooth and sweet. I never leave an unfinished cup of this brew!
Elvis Impersonator
February 14th, 2011 1:40 amMany thanks, just what I have been looking for!
Texturegen
August 24th, 2011 7:25 amAnother site for you! I’ve recently launched Free Textures from Texturegen which is a rapidly growing resource for quality textures and backgrounds.
Tasha
June 6th, 2012 12:48 pmI know that looking for the right textures and background images is quite frustrating because I, myself experienced that before. That’s why, here’s another good resource that I often used whenever I need this kind of stuff. . This website will surely help you- http://www.kozzi.com/.