16 Best Web Design Galleries for Inspiration

Apr 21 2009 by Jacob Gube | 121 Comments

Web design galleries offer designers and developers creative inspiration on their own designs. By aggregating the top web designs on the web, a gallery serves as a prime spot for getting those creative juices flowing.

In this article you’ll find 16 of the best and most popular web design galleries ranked in order by the number of votes they garnered on a poll that was published earlier this month. On instances where there was a tie, the site with the higher Alexa rank received a higher ranking.

16. Web Creme

Nearing almost 4 years of operation, Web Creme is one of the more matured website showcases on the web. The websites are displayed with large thumbnails so you don’t have to be 2 inches away from the monitor to see them. The Web Creme archives can be filtered by using color themes of sites.

15. FAVEUP

FAVEUP is a design inspiration gallery that has a CSS Websites, Flash Websites, Business Cards, and Logo section. It’s an excellent one-stop shop for your design inspiration cravings.

14. CSSREMIX

Created and administered by New-media designer John Mills, CSSREMIX is a thumbnail-style web design gallery featuring some of the best designs on the web. Subscribe to the RSS feed so that you can get notification whenever a design is featured on CSSREMIX.

13. Design Shack

Design Shack currently features over 1,800 websites in their CSS Gallery. If you think that’s too much, don’t fret, you can filter the gallery by color, by the layout type, or by category (such as Corporate or Music).

12. CSSelite.com

CSSelite.com features high-quality web designs that users can vote and comment on. Check out the Best of the Best category to see the top picks on CSSelite.com. You may also want to subscribe to the CSSelite.com RSS feed to get notified of new designs.

11. The FWA

The FWA, which stands for Favourite Website Awards, is a Flash gallery that awards one site daily for the best Flash website. It’s a coveted award by many Flash designers – and the winners typically display the FWA badge on their winning site as a mark of prestige.

10. Pattern Tap

Pattern Tap is an excellent gallery for getting interface design pattern inspiration. At Pattern Tap, you’ll find collections of common site interface components like breadcrumbs and inspirational web forms.

9. Make Better Websites

Make Better Websites has an excellent philosophy: " We want to advocate a world without visual violation of shitty advertising.". You’ll see a clean gallery interface devoid of advertising.

8. Smashing Magazine

Smashing Magazine, the premier online publication for designers and artists, has an excellent Showcase section that presents high-quality and captivating design collections. At Smashing Magazine, you’ll find great collections of tabbed navigation showcase to more niche collections such as the sports website showcase.

7. cssheaven.com

cssheaven.com is a thumbnail-style gallery. They tag and categorize entries so that you can easily find designs based on keywords or categories.

6. CSSline

CSSline is a great site for those who just want to see the designs – the site’s own design is minimalist in fashion so that you’re focused solely on designs being featured. They tag entries by keywords and color.

5. CSS Mania

CSS Mania features hundreds of web designs a month organized into many categories for you to find exactly what you’re looking for. They also have an API for developers wanting to interface with CSS Mania content.

4. DesignBombs

The only description needed for DesignBombs is quoting the site’s tagline: Droppin Bombs All F**k’n day.

3. The Best Designs

The Best Designs features only top-quality designs which are categorized into many helpful keywords for easier navigation and searching of sites.

2. Best Web Gallery

Best Web Gallery focuses on quality rather than quantity: though you may not find hundreds of updates a month, whenever there are updates, they are of the highest quality designs.

1. siteInspire

At the number one spot for the best design gallery as voted by readers: siteInspire. siteInspire currently houses close to 500 high-quality designs which you can sort in a variety of ways. siteInspire also categorizes each entry meticulously so that it’s easier to find site designs on a particular topic.

A Poll

121 Comments

om ipit

April 21st, 2009

smashing magazine is the real web design gallery…
(just my opinion) :-)

Zach

April 21st, 2009

Thanks for this! nice list of useful websites I will visit from now on…

Bob

April 21st, 2009

#9 “Make Better Websites…You’ll see a clean gallery interface devoid of advertising.” — the screen shot clearly has ads on it. Just saying…

Danh ba web 2.0

April 21st, 2009

Awesome collection. I like Best Web Gallery and Web Creme
Keep up !

Matthew Smith

April 21st, 2009

Glad to see you think Pattern Tap ranks highly on the inspiration pool for web design :)

martino chiaviello

April 21st, 2009

Great collection. I have found these and more at http://designfeeder.com/. Loads a bit slow, but worth the wait.

misterfaster

April 21st, 2009

just too much! :D but nice, thx!

taylan

April 22nd, 2009

Great collection. CSS Remix absolutely my favorite.

Callum Chapman

April 22nd, 2009

never knew there were so many!

David

April 22nd, 2009

Thx 4 sharing. Nice overview!

kwer83

April 22nd, 2009

Nice collection, I missed my favourite though:
http://www.designmeltdown.com
Especially the option to load an entire set to a frameset is very handy ;)

Pradeep CD

April 22nd, 2009

cssmania, bwg, fwa are my favs…

Daniel H

April 22nd, 2009

Thank you to everyone who voted for siteInspire! Very happy with the result.

James

April 22nd, 2009

I personally think Designshack is one of the best out there but I do love Pattern Tap for finding specific designs for certain parts of sites rather than entire sites.

David Appleyard

April 22nd, 2009

Thanks for featuring Design Shack!

Creamy CSS

April 22nd, 2009

I think Creamy CSS is a good addition to your list ;)

swape

April 22nd, 2009

Web Creme is my first pick for inspiration . But Smashing Magazine is the best “list other sites” and cool stuff site.

Pat

April 22nd, 2009

Nice post. Smashing Magazine is my absolute fav.
I don’t like gallies where thumbnail show just a part of the screenshot. It’s not really handy, because you have to click on every link to get a full picture.

Marty Desilets

April 22nd, 2009

http://designsnack.com should be on this list! Their sort and ratings mechanisms are amazing

Mike

April 22nd, 2009

You completely left out one of the major ones, Design Snack (http://designsnack.com), my personal favorite. Add it to the list and the poll, let’s make it 17 :)

Aaron Irizarry

April 22nd, 2009

Nice list, I would also add http://www.onecss.com to that list, but I am a bit biased :)

Television Spy

April 22nd, 2009

Great list not so sure about smashing magazine, it’s not really web design gallery

Dan

April 22nd, 2009

i also like and can recommend http://cssbag.com

PelFusion

April 22nd, 2009

i really liked ‘The Best Designs’
and ‘Television Spy’ is right smashing magazine is not a web design gallery though its a nice blog

James Mann

April 23rd, 2009

Great examples of work. Really minimal and fresh. Seems to be the way these days that web sites are becoming more and more simplistic, which is great when i comes to building them, less things on the CSS to go wrong.
Think i still prefer building in Flash.

GFN

April 23rd, 2009

Excellent list, some I haven’t seen.

Pattern tap wins in my opinion:)

I’m not a fan of Smashing Magazine, I see they copy a lot of articles and post them as their own quite a lot

Jacob Gube

April 23rd, 2009

@Television Spy and @PelFusion: Yes, Smashing Magazine is not just a design gallery, though they do have a Showcase section which features round-ups of designs based on a specific theme. That section has been a great inspiration and I like it that way because I get to see a set of designs all in one page. I think that’s very handy. If I wanted to see a showcase of navigation bars for inspiration, or a showcase of sports websites – each in one page, Smashing Magazine’s Showcase section is the first place I go to.

And I think many people agree with me – SM got a decent amount of votes!

anistock

April 23rd, 2009

I always look to Design Shack and Smashing Mag for ideas/insights

Kate Mag

April 23rd, 2009

The CSS Gallery List is the complete directory for Web Design Inspiration. Check them out

Biz

April 23rd, 2009

Very good list of designs. Great!

Martin

April 23rd, 2009

You forgot http://acualicio.us/rainbowned/. I think, but great article guys.

Johnluffa

April 23rd, 2009

Great collection of sites – thanks for putting this together.

Brian Hoff

April 25th, 2009

Definitely some beauties here. Also check out http://www.cssglance.com – more great inspiration.

Sriteja

April 26th, 2009

Thank U.,
Your giving very lot of information and very very useful your site.

cheguevaramtebts

May 14th, 2009

i would like to mention this web site :http//www.cssillustrated.com
more great inspiration.

prasadsambari

June 9th, 2009

Its really cool,
Great collection,its very usefull for learners

Ravikumar V.

June 12th, 2009

I love these designs….. thank you. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WebDev

June 13th, 2009

I just “launched an new way of inspiration finding” :) It is a web gallery, but there are not only websites, but separate categories for headers, footers and navigations too, browsing by colors, random designs at the end of each post, etc.
It can be found at http://firsthandweb.com
If you have any opinion, what can I do for enhancing the gallery to serve better the creativity seeking community, just write a comment or contact me through the contact page.

gaus surahman

June 13th, 2009

Plus 1 for siteinspire and I love designshack too.

pre ypi

June 19th, 2009

This is really beautiful. Inspiration by the design literally!

Maharaji Quotes

June 19th, 2009

All of them bookmarked for good :)
have enough to keep me busy for the next couple of weeks.

andimazlan

June 27th, 2009

I’m a new newcomer in blogging world. Thanks, this post really give me an inspiration to tweak and re-design my free wordpress theme.

Adeel Raza

August 7th, 2009

My personal favourite: http://inspiremix.com

pennfolio

August 8th, 2009

Great collections, I’m a fan of Smashing Magazine, CSS Mania, Web Creme and The Best Designs. I also used to visit The FWA.

Thanks for the list!

Seth

August 18th, 2009

Usually I just go between http://www.cssmadness.com and http://www.cssmania.com

Both are very up-to-date CSS gallery.

Ashley Adams

August 28th, 2009

Hey!! These are some nice web design galleries…….but my vote goes out to Smashing Magazine. I’ve always found their articles very useful. I’ve also checked out “The Best Designs” and it’s interesting too.

Waheed Akhtar

September 23rd, 2009

SmashingMagazine rocks!

pravi

October 6th, 2009

SmashingMagazine is best one for the designers

Chris Nutbeen

October 27th, 2009

Some great sites here, I also like http://procss.com, always has top class websites on.

Mark

November 10th, 2009

I would like to mention http://eyeshout.net for a inspiration gallery that you can search by color.

Dharmesh Patel

November 25th, 2009

very good constant for web designer

Bryan G. C.

December 14th, 2009

I like Behance too.

Bob Ruffolo

December 14th, 2009

Very Impressive!

austin

December 25th, 2009

will check the background, I think my site might need that. Thanks for the list

Matteo Balocco

December 28th, 2009

Hi! Really nice and useful post. I think I’ll use some of those links to get inspiration for some new designs.

Kulin

December 31st, 2009

nice collection, css remix is good

Web dizajn

January 11th, 2010

Very nice!!! :)

rama

January 13th, 2010

real web design gallery!!!!!!

Lucas

January 17th, 2010

Great list, Thank you! Go Smashing Magazine, even though I think its overdue for a redesign.

Karen Mae Farro

January 21st, 2010

Great list of design galleries. I always visit Smashing Magazine. They really have great collections!

Webever

January 30th, 2010

It’s really nice list of useful websites. Thx.

yoxx

March 16th, 2010

awesome designs!!!! wow…

chutima

April 11th, 2010

These are a great list of web design galleries. :)

May I suggest http://creativehotlinks.com/

Web dizajn

April 15th, 2010

Web design galleries are the best inspiration resource for me as a web designer. This compilation of web design galleries in this post is amazing, thanks for sharing this resource.

ChocoLoco

April 24th, 2010

http://supersit.es is pretty good too, they also focus on quality

neosheet

April 27th, 2010

great list! csselite & web creme is my favorite. but siteInspire is the best

ram

April 28th, 2010

great list, but if you need more, you can find other css galleries here : http://www.cssgallerysubmission.com/css-gallery-list/
there’s also a free css gallery submission tool there

Danang Sukma

May 1st, 2010

That Cools…
I like this one = Pattern Tap, very inspiring. I took one of that gallery for inspiring my new web design. thank for your job!

Ellie Rathbone

May 2nd, 2010

Thanks for this! I’ve been looking for some inspiration for a while and this is great. just what I’ve been waiting for. Thanks again, Ellie.

Sbx Web Designer

May 12th, 2010

awesome list….i liked “Web Creme”, “Design Shack”, “Make Better Websites”…. good job… thanks

Steve

Dave Walker

June 3rd, 2010

This is the list i’ve been waiting for!!!! I love Web Creme and Best Web they are brilliant for website inspiration, but I’ve been visiting The Import – http://www.theimport.co.uk a lot lately – not just web designs but a good feed of illustrators portfolios, interviews, inspirations and the likes – absolutely brilliant.

Mark

June 8th, 2010

Pixery is good too

Mark

June 8th, 2010

I guess I should have linked it (http://www.thepixery.com)

bravian

June 17th, 2010

really help us..amuzing!

Chilukuri Bhaskar

June 21st, 2010

smashing magazine is realy help us

Sven

June 29th, 2010

Hi all,

will also suggest my current redesigned qnt gallery for a visit.
Take a look at http://www.quandtnet.de

Kind regards,
Sven

liga webdesign

July 7th, 2010

Design Shack is now for sale unfortunately

Stefan Stanica

July 15th, 2010

Really useful css gallery list. Thank you a lot. Hope our website http://www.psd2htmlfast.com will get approved.

CSS Gallery

July 21st, 2010

Very good inspiration list! We hope you will consider http://CSSGallery.com on your next update of these resources. If we can answer any questions please let us know.
Cheers!
Staff of CSSGallery.com

Graphiste

August 19th, 2010

Nice web design collection here, you should make a new article about the new ones and in adding more :) Thanks

Auds Velasco

August 25th, 2010

Submitting some of my design in some sites listed above.. Thanks for sharing! Cheers!

Muhammed Riyas

August 26th, 2010

nice one..

Craig

September 9th, 2010

Great collection of website galleries, Thanks!

Philip

September 14th, 2010

Add to the list 10 degrees – http://www.10degs.com

CSS Gallery Pro

September 21st, 2010

Hello,
Great list and great job.
Please also consider http://www.cssgallerypro.com
Thanks

Deepesh

September 26th, 2010

Nice Listing.
Besides FWA, there are others flash gallery also which worth to check – http://fffflashed.com and http://koflash.com.

Thanks for the listings.

Giorgio Molinaro

October 1st, 2010

Awesome collection :D i just want to suggest http://980px.com

Kendall

October 13th, 2010

Also worth checking out: http://www.arscssgallery.com

And for all you CSS3 junkies: http://www.arscss3gallery.com

Sarah

November 4th, 2010

Cool stuff what is worth checking out easy-design.org. Flash and css gallery!

Apie Studio

January 17th, 2011

This is amazing, i love this, nice one.

James

January 19th, 2011

great sites, loving this

Excellent list. thank you for sharing. Another really good site is mobileInDesign.com, http://www.mobileInDesign.com

neel

March 6th, 2011

Just saw new excellent gallery http://css-trends.com with good quality websites showcased.. Very good for web design inspiration.

Yura

March 9th, 2011

We also run an ad-free gallery of some of the best websites. Pretty cool tool as you can submit multiple pages for the website and always come back to them in case a website has been redesigned. Website is called Refresh STYLE and can be found here: http://www.refreshstyle.net

Cheers!

J. Hendrix

March 16th, 2011

Awesome roundup! Good for hours of inspiration :)

JF

March 22nd, 2011

and styleboost ?????

http://styleboost.com/

karl

March 24th, 2011

Awesome collection. Thank you for this post!
May I also suggest a simple yet convenient web gallery:
http://asaiment.com

Cheers!

Atom

April 4th, 2011

Great list. Thanks a lot. Very helpful.

Kim

April 12th, 2011

Cool list. If anyone is looking for more nice sites good sources for inspiration. I would suggest:

http://www.bestwebdesignaward.com
http://www.designlicks.com/
http://www.dopeawards.com/

Sadox

April 25th, 2011

http://www.designget.com is my favorite as well

zsameer

May 3rd, 2011

cool designs. looking so awesome and great inspiration.

NurhadiJogja

June 9th, 2011

cool,, thanks..
;)

Web Vietnam

July 8th, 2011

Thanks for sharing. Great collection.

dariush

July 24th, 2011

Thanks a lot.

endsoftdesign

August 4th, 2011

This is really very beautiful. Inspiration by the designs literally!

Mack

August 6th, 2011

Excellent list of galleries I was already using few of it. however it is good to know more. One more great css showcase http://www.csstrophy.com.

Ana

August 30th, 2011

Smashing Magazine is the best for sure, but this one is also nice: http://sexycssweb.com/

Back2DLab Creative

September 6th, 2011

Thank you for the compilation. Looking forward to an updated 2011 list.

alison

October 9th, 2011

thanks for the great resources!
another one I did not see in the article or comments, that I’ve found is really helpful (and exhaustive!) is http://webdesignledger.com