20 Useful Websites for Graphic Design Textures and Patterns

May 22nd, 2009 by Kawsar Ali | 25 Comments | Stumble It! Delicious

Patterns and textures, when applied correctly, can produce amazing and truly unique designs. Typically, they are used for site backgrounds, but can also be used as repeating patterns on site components such as the header and the footer. If you use right type of patterns it can really improve your site visually for the viewer.

In this article, we share 20 excellent sites where you can find and download seamless textures, patterns, and tiles free of cost.

1. Seamless Textures

Seamless Textures, as the name of the site implies, provides high-quality textures. Defined by the site, a seamless texture "can be repeated infinitely without showing any edges. They are primarily used in 3D design, website backgrounds, graphic design, and desktop wallpapers".

2. Pattern8

Pattern8 has a gallery style thumbnail layout so that you can quickly view a large amount of patterns in one page at once. The site also has a nifty filter feature that permits you to narrow down what you see by color.

3. Kaliber1000

Kaliber1000 has a beautiful and distinctive collection of pixel patterns, patterns crafted in the style of pixel art.

4. PatternCooler

PatternCooler is an excellent site for getting seamless patterns. With each pattern featured, you’re able to modify the color, rotate and resize their resolution, and save them to your PatternCooler account (if you have one).

5. Ava7Patterns

Ava7Patterns provides beautiful patterns for you to download. You can search patterns through the site’s collection of over 1,200 patterns by color or by shape.

6. Vector Valley

Vector Valley, a resource repository for vectors, has a section on patterns that provides simply gorgeous, vector-based background patterns.

7. The Variant

The Variant is a design hub where you can download patterns for use in designs. The patterns are grouped into useful categories such as Geometric and Striped so that you can swiftly find what you’re looking for.

8. One Odd Dude

One Odd Dude has a Textures section on the site with a large variety of stock textures that you can filter by category and order by popularity, user rating, and the date it was published.

9. GRSites

GRSites is a directory-style resource center for background textures. They’re one of the (if not the) biggest archive of background patterns on the web.

10. Background Labs

Background Labs features many backgrounds for you to download. They have a tag cloud search feature so that you can easily search background textures by keyword.

11. Portfelia

Portfelia is the personal site of designer Nazan Dedeoglu. The site also provides a beautiful array of graphic design patterns. Read the terms of use for them before using the patterns.

12. Rainbow Row Graphic

Rainbow Row Graphic provides a solid set of great-looking patterns and tiles that you can download. They provide two main types of patterns: Plaid and Patterned Tiles (and they’re further subcategorized into various logical groups).

13. Templateyes

Templateeyes offers over a hundred beautiful background patterns for you to download and use.

14. Better Textures

Better Textures is a collection of free, high-quality, and original seamless background textures. They organize the collection into groups such as Burlap and Dry Brush.

15. Patterrific

Patterrific is a blog-style site that features beautiful and note-worthy graphic design patterns, alongside helpful posts that showcase the users’ designs.

16. Patterns of Change

Patterns of Change

Patterns of Change, by Liza Phoenix, features unique and truly brilliant graphic design patterns such as this pastel mushrooms pattern.

17. Background Archive

Background Archive is a showcase of background patterns that you can download. They have an excellent search feature on the right-hand sidebar so that you can find precisely the background pattern for you.

18. Gallerie

Gallerie is an excellent German site that features downloadable patterns. Hint: since the site is in German, you can use Google translate if you need it.

19. Citrus Moon Pattern

Started in 2004, Citrus Moon Pattern provides original graphic design patterns. The site updates stopped around 2005, but patterns were featured almost every day, so there are a lot of patterns to find there still.

20. Pattern Head

Pattern Head is a blog-style site that features beautiful graphic design patterns such as beautiful vintage patterns.

About the Author

Kawsar Ali is a web designer, graphic designer, and wannabe photographer based in NY, U.S. He’s also the founder of Desizntech,a site to find tips about web design, Mac, PC and more. If you’d like to connect with him, you can follow him on Twitter or at his Personal Website.

25 Comments

Roseli A. Bakar

May 22nd, 2009

Thanks for sharing Kawsar.

Cool designs. RT for ya.

Liam McCabe

May 22nd, 2009

some nice sites :)

Ninja Clone

May 22nd, 2009

Nice, but cgtextures.com definitely should be in the list

Troy

May 22nd, 2009

http://www.squidfingers.com is another good resource for background patterns. I’ve used their patterns for a number of projects, with great results.

Kawsar Ali

May 22nd, 2009

Thanks guys.
@troy @Ninja Jacob did post before where he included those great sites you guys mentioned.
http://sixrevisions.com/resources/30-excellent-resources-for-graphic-design-freebies/

Krystian

May 22nd, 2009

One of my favorite is cgtextures.com
Thank you for nice collection.

daftviking

May 22nd, 2009

Repper ( http://repper.studioludens.com/ ) should also be on the list – not a collection of patterns, but a tool to create seamless background patterns based on any image you want. Kind of like playing with a kaleidoscope.

Ashely Adams

May 23rd, 2009

Thanks for the list. Ready resources are always helpful when you are running short of time or inspiration, or both. What is interesting to note is that some of these designs have the power to dictate the entire design. So, it’s not always a case of having a background for your design, but a design for your background.