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Nice Showcase!! gives a good idea about respective trend !!

DKumar M.
@instantShift

Damn, we’ll be releasing our site in the next couple of weeks and has some good lighting effects. Good list anyways!

Great examples. May I humbly throw my own site into the hat? http://iampariah.com

love this post

Another nice lighting effect can be seen on okb – interactive studio okb – Interactive studio

Nice list BTW

What about http://cannonballcommunications.com/ ? It’s awesome.

Nice examples, but didn’t you just do this post like two weeks ago?

Nice examples, i like this site http://macalicious.com/

Anyone have any good links to get started on creating something like this for a beginner?

Good collection, nice examples. Hype turning into a style to choose from, always nice:)

Hmmm I don’t want to accuse anyone, but I remember that I saw this article some were else a few weeks ago…. wel whatever, It’s a good article

@matt – Also agreed :)

Your déja vu feeling refers to an article on Vandelay Design :
http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/galleries/light-effects/

IMO, I prefer this selection…

@Nikkel

I really like the trend of lighting effects. When used consistently and well it’s stunning.

all done by the same designer?

@Ian: I’d have to agree… some of these look excellent but most experienced designers would be able to recreate the majority of these effects.

wow great list! like the Icondock

Cool selection, good lighting makes such a difference!

Beautiful collection. Thanks Smashing.

Beautiful examples, SM. Just the kind of inspiration I could use. Thanks!

Pretty sites, but a gradient fill is not a “lighting effect”. It just happens to be trendy.

good work and all. I’m just tired of seeing all the same sites.

Nice selection of work. I really Like Paul Lee’s work as well. +1

Fällt dem Designer nichts mehr ein: ein Farbverlauf, dass muss es sein!

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Love the Mailchimp Website

These are some great examples. Some of them are simply stunning. Thanks for sharing. This will make a great resource for inspiration.

Awesome! Thanks for posting one of my sites, it’s my first design to get on Smashing!

I made the ‘Ditley’ site.

You can see more of my work here: Loukotka Design

I’m impressed with a lot of the other work as well.

Something else with particles of light…
http://le-marquis.nelhost.com/

Lighting is nice, but I’m already very tired of seeing those colored lens flare circles floating around everywhere! They are like so many design fads – they look good when one person uses them, so then everyone starts using them. Ugh.

Good collection, nice examples.thanks…

Really nice!

Very nice! The earlier comment that most designers could recreate the effects is missing the point. These examples illustrate how to draw attention to a certain area of the page without hitting the user over the head. Subtle is good. And timeless.

Man, I love Smashing, but please come up with some better ideas. Even if you are going to use these lame ideas please use better examples. Some of these were good, but most were not great. I’ve noticed that smashing takes almost every single logo that they post as “new” and “exciting” from logopond.com. DO SOME RESEARCH and find some truly inspiring and creative material…PLEASE!

The “Vidget” example has no light source whatsoever yet it is posted here. If it really was a good example then I would really hate to see a bad one. Come on that Vidget site didn’t have one shadow on it! How can there be a distinct light source and not even one shadow? Maybe the writer of this article is playing a favorite card, whom knows?

I’m not trying to bash here, I LOVE SMASHING and would defend it against any other site of its kind. But please quit throwing things up here just because you think no one would ever know the difference….

http://www.orcon.net.nz i like the lighting behind the logo….

what an awesome compilation! they were all awesome! *love*love*

I appreciate all the feedback!

@Guy, I’m sorry you didn’t like most of the examples. When I was preparing this, I wanted to give examples of both bold lighting and subtle lighting (as explained in the intro). There is a faint glow behind the Viget logo from a radial light source in the background of the header. I think this subtle lighting makes the design very appealing, so I wanted to include it. But I know that with all the different perspectives out there, there may be some, like you, who don’t see it as a soft light source, so I do understand where you are coming from. I appreciate your opinion and your feedback!

@Neeraj and @ MARYAM, I am sorry that you are upset about seeing some of the same websites as in other blog posts around the web. I did try to find many examples that were new and fresh, but sometimes web designs that are really good also become well-known in the design world – and for many different reasons. I also wanted to make sure that I included the well-known sites that are great examples of lighting effects because I knew that some people would be disappointed in the article if I left those great examples out. But I appreciate your feedback! I will keep your comments in mind if I create a showcase article again in the future.

@Roy, @Tom, @Jessica, and to all the others that enjoyed the showcase – Thank you! My ultimate goal was to make a compilation of what myself and Smashing thought were great examples of lighting effects in web design. I am glad you liked it. :o)

Great showcase – Love the examples!

Angela,

Thank you for posting this article. I have seen a lot of these sites before and everytime I see them again, I get inspired even more. Some people might complain about seeing the same website in a post, but other readers who don’t read every post learns of a new website that can inspire them too. And thank you for posting Revive Africa on this list. I am the creative director for Church Media Group and who designed Revive Africa. Last but not least, can you explain the reason this site made it to the list? Thank you!

Wow.

@Ismael – Good job on the site! It’s a great design. The Smashing editor added a few sites to my initial list to give a few more examples, and yours was one that the editor added, so I can’t personally take all the credit for including it. :o) The yellow gradient gives an illusion of a subtle underlighting and adds depth to the site’s atmosphere. Nice work!

@Martin – There is a tutorial published by smashing a few weeks ago that is linked to in the intro of this showcase. Hope this helps!

Thank you for posting this article. Its very nice pack specialy as for me viget labs
teleit.pl – strony www

This is another great example http://wnd.pousta.com/
(from css mania)

Very nice examples. Thx for the inspiration

Very nice showcase

veal cool!

that crush + lovely page has a background image of 1.2MB with barely any exposure. Thats such a waste of bandwidth not to mention that the background could be exactly the same with 10 times smaller filesize.

Hi!! http://www.paolobortolotti.com site with strange light

Cool light!

Cool,nice!
css

W.O.W !!!! it`s inspired me !!!! thanks for review/showcase ^_^. i very very very love it !