Showcase Of Beautiful Textured Web Designs
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Textures have become more popular and been put to greater use in recent years. They’re not limited to Web design either; textures of all kinds are used in print design, illustration, traditional art, TV commercials… you name it! Texture is one of the best ways to add depth to your design, whether it’s subtle noise on a clean vector illustration or a lot of grunginess throughout a layout.
Over the last weeks we collected numerous examples of beautiful textured Web designs to inspire you, followed by a small collection of links to help you get started in using textures in your own designs.
If you like this post, you may be interested in reading some of our other texture-related articles:
Textured Web Designs
Texture Downloads
- Texture Lovers
- Lost and Taken
- Zen Textures
- Love Textures
- WebTreats ETC
- Circlebox Textures
- Texture Vault
- Textur.es
A community-driven growing gallery of freely available textures.
Texture Tutorials
- Create a Cartoon Grunge Website Layout
- Create a Green Grunge Web Layout
- How to Create a Textured Grungy 3D Type Design
- Texture with Layer Modes
- Design a Stylish Retro Game Boy Poster
- Add Visual Texture in 3 Easy Steps
- Create a Texture Based Poster
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spritzstuhl
October 29th, 2009 7:52 amGood article!
Scott Langendyk
October 29th, 2009 8:03 amGreat collection, only seen a handful of these before. I love a well textured website design.
enatom
October 29th, 2009 8:06 amNot a big fan of such complex visuals, for websites & user-interfaces.
The Graphics in those websites are really good though.
STPo
October 29th, 2009 8:40 amThank you for the mention guys!
Stephan
October 29th, 2009 8:42 amYou missed one of the best: Check out the portfolio of Elder Jerez, amazing use of textures: http://www.progressiveone.com
Mark
October 29th, 2009 8:42 amNice to see some sites with more creative and relevant textures other than the cliché ‘grunge’ effect.
939 Design
October 29th, 2009 8:46 amSome real cool designs here.
kpjothivelu
October 29th, 2009 9:09 amexcellent creative !!! very useful for me!! awesome creators!!!
Kerri
October 29th, 2009 9:16 amGreat collection—full of sites I haven’t seen before (so rare in these kind of posts these days)! Kudos.
Msizisto
July 26th, 2012 3:22 pmThank you Kate and Jessica for hosting me today! I had so much fun as your guest today :) And Kate, thank you for the wodeurfnl review. I’m so excited (jumping up and down thrilled) to hear that you enjoyed it!!
Steelrocks
October 29th, 2009 9:19 amGripping stuff!
Kevin
October 29th, 2009 9:47 amAs pretty as some are, I can’t see them being very practical. THS has a background image that weighs in at 1.1mb. Not exactly optimized!
Callum Chapman
October 29th, 2009 10:06 amGlad you like it – it took a while to put this one together! Quite a lot of research went in to finding unseen sites by both me and Vitaly. Thanks for the links guys, I’ve bookmarked them for a future post! ;)
Mike
October 29th, 2009 10:46 amGreat roundup! I think the {ths} one is pretty inspiring. Another example of combining different textures to create depth: http://aggressivepanhandler.com
Skip Knox
October 29th, 2009 11:17 amSeriously? Background images? Yes these are nicer than the cement and wood grain textures of fifteen years ago, but it’s still basically the same thing.
I guess I’m with the crowd that doesn’t much care what color of paint is on the outside of the store. I’m interested in what’s inside. And I’ll guarantee you the inside doesn’t look like the outside, most times.
mary fran
October 29th, 2009 11:20 amfabulous collection!
Micheal
October 29th, 2009 11:23 amNice collection. Better than the of last year :) More my kind of stuff ^^
I think you should add http://nocreativity.com/blog/ too. The header and footer are pieces of artwork!
Abi
October 29th, 2009 11:26 amI LOVE THIS! I’m so happy you’ve posted this, this is exactly my style and I’ve been lacking inspiration of late, brill! Thanks!
Symon
October 29th, 2009 11:43 amGreat and inspiring collection. Thanks.
Ryan
October 29th, 2009 11:56 amSome really unique designs here, Brown Bag films has been a favorite site of mine for awhile.
Joanna
October 29th, 2009 12:07 pmTexture has been a growing trend in web design and I hope it’s here to stay. I love the style. The trick here is to incorporate textures without making the designs too heavy. Many of these examples here show that texture and clean design can work together beautifully.
Great selections, love so many.
Dan
October 29th, 2009 12:55 pmAwesome round up! Textured is a great design style that doesn’t get enough press. Not only is it difficult to design, but converting to HTML is no walk in the park.
Jessica
October 29th, 2009 1:43 pmOh, wow. Remarkable.
Prez
October 29th, 2009 2:58 pmSome genuinely beautiful and clever sites – most are portfolio sites it would seem. No harm in that. Translating this into the corporate online world might not be the way to go but inspirational nonetheless.
Well done SM. Keep up the great work.
Jason
October 29th, 2009 4:29 pmFYI the Handcrafted CSS link is broken.
Alex
October 29th, 2009 5:11 pmThanks for the mention and great collection. Congrates !
Christopher Anderton
October 29th, 2009 5:40 pmHello. My name is *input your name here*. I’m a designer and….
AHHHHHHHHHH!! :)
Alexis
October 29th, 2009 9:19 pmThanks for mention Eliseos You guys rock!
sankoodali
October 29th, 2009 10:11 pmBeautyful collections!!!!!!!!!
Lesly Garreau
October 29th, 2009 11:52 pmThanks for the mention dude and great collection. Congrates !
Albert
October 30th, 2009 12:05 amCongrats….Nice collection
Klime Matoski
October 30th, 2009 1:24 amCheck this one also : http://www.skovin.com.mk
Tom
October 30th, 2009 1:44 amGreat!
jm
October 30th, 2009 1:45 amMartin Anderle’s site is totally gorgeous!!
Eli
October 30th, 2009 2:22 amNow that’s a roundup. Love texture and love learning how to better use it, especially in web design.
Sandstream
October 30th, 2009 2:26 amThanks for taking the time to collect these beatiful sites of inspiration!
Maicon Sobczak
October 30th, 2009 3:12 amAmazin!
Lesly Garreau
October 30th, 2009 3:48 amI post a news about this post in our 53mondays blog. We very happy in agency ^^.
Daniel Peplow
October 30th, 2009 3:50 amSome awesome work there – really impressive stuff. Check out In Safe Hands Childcare for another good use textured background
Morphix
October 30th, 2009 4:53 amThank you guys at Smashing Magazine for mentioning our site!
martinanderle
October 30th, 2009 6:07 amhey, thanks for mentioning my site – nice collection :)))
greetz from frankfurt
Brett
October 30th, 2009 6:23 amI can’t help but find the header in the second example funny.
“Hello! I’m Graphic Designer who is passionate for creating modern and functional design that provokes feelings.”
Nice to meet you Graphic Designer, thanks for provoking feelings. I’m not going to say what type of feelings, just feelings in general will do.
Dustin Evans
October 30th, 2009 6:27 amthanks for recognizing “Trinity Irish Pub” it was a tuff one :)
Francis Mozier
October 30th, 2009 7:48 ammany of these showing that usability and personality are awesome together, a break from the tired clinical interfaces… faves: brown bag, ths, story pixel, sushi/robots
Jose Martinez
October 30th, 2009 9:36 amAnother one:
http://grafitio.com
Lisa & Danny Bergedorf
October 30th, 2009 9:38 amThank you so much for mentioning our website – and thank you so much to our designer too. Thank you :-)
We really like some of the others to..
Karl Francisco Fernandes
October 30th, 2009 10:04 amThank you Smashing Magazine for this mention! This is a dream come true. Cheers!
Mike
October 30th, 2009 10:46 amawesome reference post, but am i the only one who is sick of seeing layers and layers of dirty paper, stickies and paperclip collages on every other site?
Adam
October 30th, 2009 10:25 pm@Mike
I agree. I’m tired of seeing every other website I visit using these design elements in them.
Though, I do like this collection. Inspirational!
matthew carleton
October 31st, 2009 5:22 amI love textured sites.
Floris Fiedeldij Dop
October 31st, 2009 6:11 amI love these designs, but they are just too much. It is a puzzle to read what the content of the site is sometimes. Everything in moderation, seems to be forgotten here, sometimes. Many are excellent. Great inspiration.
Grant
November 16th, 2009 5:05 pmThanks for the feature! Minor correction: the site is Lilly’s Table, not Lilly Stable.
appletxm
November 23rd, 2009 7:12 pmY, it’s very nice, thx.
Gavin
December 9th, 2009 8:56 pmThunder Fuel is awesome! I love the background of it. so cool.
Hal
August 26th, 2010 12:46 pmHere’s a brand new one that just launched for a Youtube celeb:
http://www.davedays.com