100 Beautiful Free Textures
Use of texture in Web design is extremely common. Part of the reason textures are so useful to designers is the relative ease of the integrating one into a design if a high-quality textured image already exists, not to mention the endless possibilities. Fortunately, plenty of photographers and designers are willing to share their work with the rest of us so that we can use them in a number of different ways.
In this post, we’ll look at 100 different textures in a wide variety of different categories. Of course, each image is linked to the source where it can be downloaded. As with any type of freebie, be sure to read the terms and conditions or stipulations by the owner before using it in your work.
For more on textures see:
1. Wool Textures
2. Leather Textures
3. Denim Textures
4. Cardboard Textures
5. Paper Textures
6. Wood Textures
7. Wall Textures
8. Metallic Textures
9. Grunge Textures
10. Gritty Textures
11. Granular Textures
12. Water Textures
13. Glass Textures
14. Grass Textures
15. Tiled Textures
16. Modern Textures
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Maik Diepenbroek
February 6th, 2009 5:12 amWow, this is going to be useful ! thanks for this post !
Valerie Wininger
February 6th, 2009 5:14 amGreat resource, as always! Thanks guys!
ilz
February 6th, 2009 5:23 amNow THAT is useful! You couldn’t have done that 2 days ago; when i was searching for a grass shot!
DKumar M.
February 6th, 2009 5:24 amNice Collection Steven…. Thanks for sharing !!
Useful Collection of some of the Nice Textures for web Design ppls.
pete
February 6th, 2009 5:26 amSomeone zip them all up and host them, you’ll be a hero.
Hero of Time
December 17th, 2010 3:24 pmWho want all of them, ziped? http://www.mediafire.com/file/y215djiatwg8363/Textures.zip
ALL 100 TEXTURES HERE!
Richard Steffens
May 12th, 2011 5:51 amThanks so much!
WeSayIT Magazine
February 6th, 2009 5:28 amAs usually, a great post with a great collection! Congratulations !
arvin
February 6th, 2009 5:29 amnice collection very useful thank you
Anwar Bendaoud Andersson
February 6th, 2009 5:44 amIt would be great if you followed this up with a tutorial showing examples on how to apply these textures to your work (specially web-pages). I usually find texture-packs really cool and i love the grunge feel of a website, but actually getting there is usually tougher than expected.
Mario
February 6th, 2009 5:53 amSome fail and look tilted. Also resolution may raise dramatically your document size, you have to implement it wisely.
Harvey
February 6th, 2009 5:53 am… what Anwar said.
Htoo Tay Zar
February 6th, 2009 6:06 amWow, Right Time, I’m now searching water texture for projects, thanks SM.
Anyway, Notice that Comment #4 has commentor’s web site link. How it comes? Just wanna know I’m not spammer.
Laura
February 6th, 2009 6:36 amLooks like you just pillaged this post on OpenSourceHunter.
I agree with Anwar, would be cool to see some posts on implementing textures in web site design.
Khan
November 10th, 2010 11:14 pmi do agree with Laura, ur great…
Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz
February 6th, 2009 6:44 am@Anwar and @Harvey: please check the links mentioned in the beginning of the post.
alex
February 6th, 2009 6:46 amOne of the greatest collections ever.Thumbs Up SM.
Tim Murren
February 6th, 2009 6:53 amSome of these feel like snapshots, but others look very useful. I’m using the 5th wool texture for a brochure right now. Thanks for the great post!
michael
February 6th, 2009 7:15 ammmm delicious!
cassetti
February 6th, 2009 7:24 amThanks!
I added this to my evernote (evernote.com) in case i ever need these for photoshop!
Thanks again!
Possumposs
February 6th, 2009 7:35 amVery nice! The hairy leg is gross but will make sure to use the rest haha
whatever
February 6th, 2009 8:15 amCool! Thanks!
vellkan
February 6th, 2009 8:22 amLovely! I was looking some wood textures for my projects, now – I’ve got more then I’m expected! Thanks :)
Chau
February 6th, 2009 8:29 amThis is fantastic – thank you very much
mark eric
February 6th, 2009 8:36 amI like the grit and grunge. Don’t see much use for the others. Thanks for the links!
steve
February 6th, 2009 9:22 amsweet post! the carpet ones kind of freak me out though…. :)
gogonel
February 6th, 2009 10:43 amgreat! awsome! tnx a lot!!
Mark
February 6th, 2009 11:04 amNow we’re talkin! These are GREAT textures. This is the first time in a while I’ve been truly inspired by a smashing post.
Webdesigner Depot
February 6th, 2009 11:19 amWhat a wonderful collection of textures. Definitely going to look at using some.
Greg Ponchak
February 6th, 2009 12:34 pmMost useful post ever. Thanks you guys :D
@leoferr
February 6th, 2009 1:14 pmSo many references at the same place. Clap, clap for you Smash!
Hernan Valencia
February 6th, 2009 1:56 pmHooray and ring the bell!
nicole
February 6th, 2009 3:44 pmvery nice! wonderful selection here for sure.
chiefwakambi
February 6th, 2009 5:52 pmCan’t get enough from you.
Thank You.
Schahryar
February 6th, 2009 7:21 pmThat’s really cool :)) Thanks!
Waiting to see more textures from smashingmag … hopefully tileable ;)
gaurav
February 6th, 2009 8:32 pmnice collection light dose post feeling light cloudy
Wani
February 7th, 2009 3:28 amGood Resource.
Curt Simon Harlinghausen
February 7th, 2009 4:19 amFantastic Collection.
Really good work.
Nixon
February 7th, 2009 6:16 amNice list! I frequently use the site imageafter.com. There are tons of free, high-resolution textures there. Check it out.
WackoJacko
February 7th, 2009 7:37 amVery nice, but I do wish that they were tile-able. Many of these are definitely not. They would have to be used as large images. I like subtle textures in the back of web pages.
Brian Gottier
February 7th, 2009 1:12 pmSome NEW examples of textures used in web design would have been nice. Also, as WackoJacko suggests, images suitable for tiling would have been nice.
Reynald Bouttard
February 7th, 2009 2:29 pmReally nice, and will be usefull, thanks ! I like Modern textures.
Kayla
February 7th, 2009 6:42 pmOoh…I love the wool textures. Great post!
Han
February 7th, 2009 7:47 pmSo thanks to your nice! :D
jen wong
February 7th, 2009 10:54 pmi love you !!!
lewo
February 8th, 2009 4:15 amThanks. Very good idea. bye
Okibi
February 8th, 2009 3:06 pmNice collection, thank you very much.
BramVoltage Shomasta
February 8th, 2009 6:44 pmvery very useful..
thank you very much.
Ross
February 9th, 2009 12:27 amGreat collection, surely ill be needing this in the near future. Thanks SM!
sAumiTRa
February 9th, 2009 2:18 amgreat work steve… i didnt copy neither did i learn… but felt happy aba the way in which the shots were taken….
inspiring work…. keep it up….
Jehzeel Laurente
February 9th, 2009 1:33 pmI’m so loving the modern textures :)
Tracy
February 9th, 2009 2:21 pmGreat texture collection. Thanks!
Sledneck
February 9th, 2009 3:16 pmAwesome collection, i can already see about 10 or more that will find there way into my designs.
Jesse J. Anderson
February 9th, 2009 3:36 pmsorry for the self-plug, but if you find this useful you would also be interested in a free grunge texture pack I just released and posted in the smashing magazine forums. I also have a link to a texture tutorial in the same forum post.
http://forum.smashingmagazine.com/freebies-f4/free-hi-res-grunge-textures-pack-t314.html
Hope you find them useful!
RoundSquare
February 9th, 2009 6:26 pmSomeone likely already commented on this, but one of your wall textures links to http://www.sxc.hu, which requires that you create an account with the following mandatory fields:
______________________
* First name
* Last name
* Phone number
* Street address
* City
* State / Province
* Country
* Zip / Postal code
______________________
There’s just one word for this – LAME! The collection as a whole is great, but I still found myself saying, “WTF?”
Ritika
February 10th, 2009 12:06 amwow…thats exactly what I was looking for…thanks for sharing
Red Labor
February 10th, 2009 4:53 amMy friend and I are artists (Red Labor) and we do a lot of work with textures in our art and graphic design for t-shirts, wallets and messenger bags. We really like to make our own textures from scratch and scan them in; they are much higher quality and our designs are more unique that way. If you want to see some of our textures check them out here: http://www.redlabor.com/analogue/
This is a good list of free textures and I encourage everyone to push beyond this and try making your own on paper and then scan or photograph them. I hope you like our art, too!
-Red Labor
Graphista
February 10th, 2009 5:26 amThese are really great. Thanks for sharing!
Abdul Haseeb
February 10th, 2009 6:37 amvery impressive textures,Few of them will certainly find there way into my designs.
wow
February 10th, 2009 11:56 amwow awesome! Thanks a lot!
joe
February 10th, 2009 11:00 pmthese textures are superb! I say, the variety is fantasic and the clarity unbelievable! great collection!
SeaFoodpunch
February 10th, 2009 11:50 pmoh man, that is some useful stuff!! i am so addicted to textures right now…amazing what a difference it makes. Even the hairy legs will come in handy. haha. i’d love to see other people’s works using these….I’m a novice..but stuff like this always helps
srinivas
February 11th, 2009 12:16 amGreat texture collection. Thanks!
guelderose
February 13th, 2009 5:32 amthe textures are great, tnx!
ravi
February 18th, 2009 6:39 amthe broken glass is too good.very useful
Lyon
February 19th, 2009 6:42 amI really love all of those textures, they are all profesional and unique.
wyc
February 22nd, 2009 7:47 pm很好~~~
Brant Schroeder
February 25th, 2009 1:21 pmThanks
ProjectCenter
March 8th, 2009 3:03 pmWow. This is some nice work. Great crisp detail. Thanks.
Brandon
March 9th, 2009 8:32 amHey all… I compressed all of these images into a ZIP.
Do NOT do this for public download!
understandfrench
March 12th, 2009 1:19 pmWOW-!! Thank you so much, so very generous. extremely useful & beautiful images. ;()
0----
March 14th, 2009 5:08 amThanks!
jessica
March 18th, 2009 6:31 pmlove the design you have on your site… more power!
marina
March 24th, 2009 2:00 amthank you ! love this!
nohelia
April 2nd, 2009 4:09 pmGracias!!
Amy
April 5th, 2009 5:37 pmLas texturas son fantásticas!!!
Cool Creative Designer
April 9th, 2009 5:24 amAwesome collection :)
I wanna also share those nice free High Resolution Textures Packs with all
http://dezign-mag.com/?p=134
GabaDi
April 15th, 2009 10:59 amThank you very much!!!! and congratulations ;)
fatie
May 12th, 2009 10:29 amccooool man
yong
June 18th, 2009 7:34 amwow~!!
great~
Thank you~
amar
July 2nd, 2009 11:11 pmGreat resource, as always! Thanks guys!
krishna
September 20th, 2009 12:06 amwe usefull textures it helpme alot thanks
clem
November 28th, 2009 11:46 amSome free HD textures in my picasa web album : http://picasaweb.google.com/clement.biron/Textures#
finn~luv
December 28th, 2009 4:23 amSo nice collection!!!!
Thanks so much!!!
Windy May
January 3rd, 2010 11:37 amFantastic collection of textures. I will definitely be incorporating some of these into my work as well as passing this post along as an excellent resource.
Was hoping for some fur in the mix *rowl*…
Awesome and thanks again!!!
WM
Greg15
January 28th, 2010 11:36 pmHi there sorry for the link but you also find there free good textures, my friend have shared his free textures pack in: http://www.texturepalace.com. This pack is amazing!
Tx again: Greg15
Sinfrônio de Souza Barbosa
February 7th, 2010 5:42 amParabéns. Metais:bronze, ouro, prata, metais ondulados (telha) é muito lindo. Grato.
felix
February 11th, 2010 8:52 pmanother site with textures: http://textures.creatiif.net
Greg Babula
February 25th, 2010 5:04 pmSadly, a lot of these are broken links now :-(
Tori
April 21st, 2010 8:02 amI’ve got a little collection of some textures I’ve taken photos of, feel free to use them…http://catchatori.com/index.php/2010/04/textures-of-the-nw/
Kim
April 26th, 2010 11:02 pmAnd another nice website with free hi res textures http://www.texturer.com
Yachika Verma
May 13th, 2010 12:01 pmOne of the best textures..I must say. Really….!! I am in love with many of them. thanks.
Ellen
May 31st, 2010 11:20 amamazing!
Adobe Designer
July 27th, 2010 9:52 amCheck out a new one: http://www.texturemate.com Looks great!
Craig Pennings
July 31st, 2010 10:37 amGreat textures! I have another sweet site with high-res textures that i would like to share http://www.web30textures.com Thanks!
Girish
September 3rd, 2010 6:43 pmOkay one of the leather ones is a RICK ROLL! whats up with that?!
Joel Falconer
September 20th, 2010 1:43 amUnfortunately, half the list seems to be rick rolls now. :(
nickb
October 26th, 2010 4:46 amall the ones i wanted were rick rolls.
Emily
November 11th, 2010 3:06 pm2 of the 3 I clicked on were rick rolls
A.
December 2nd, 2010 2:18 pmI just got Rick Roll’d
Omar Khodeir
January 5th, 2011 9:40 pmHey guys check out my texture gallery at pixigraintextures.tumblr.com/ its FREE for designers to use…Follow me for regular updates of unique PIXIGRAIN’s and always remember that the bests things in life are free
Dreamtextures
February 24th, 2011 12:07 amNice texture pack keep smashing!
hadi
March 2nd, 2011 1:09 amvery good………………………….