Daily Web Design Inspiration & Ideas
Squidfingers is an excellent source for some great wallpaper or background patterns. Check out their list of 158 patterns! These are all free for use. However, if you do choose to use one of them, make sure you credit Squidfingers with a link. It’s only fair…after all, they are letting you use the design for FREE. (Have I mentioned before that free is a great price??) 
Enjoy!
Popularity: 6%
The CSS way of creating great website backgrounds. Nathaniel from tutvid.com did a nice video tutorial that shows how this is done.
Using a top gradient image with a background color you can acheve unique looking backgrounds for your websites. Just use your imagination to create the one that will work with yours.
Popularity: 12%
Okay, I’m copying Valik’s idea (sorry Valik)! But, I had to see if I could find another great looking wood grain texture. Success! HighResolutionTextures.com’s background texture is really cool. It looks like a nice weather wooden fence gate (see the hinge?). I also like the way it fades out into black as you scroll down the page. There are also plenty of other great looking textures featured on this website that could be of use to designers too. Check them all out. If you see something else of interest there, let me know about it and we’ll post it here!
Popularity: 43%
I’m sure once you view Min Tran’s blog, it will come as no surprise that I really like it. It’s rich with earth tones and the leather textures are wonderful. I particularly like the way the stitching separates the header from the body of the page. I also like the separation of the main navigation with the creation of the leather scroll. The footer is also nicely put together by remaining consistent with the header style. All together it creates a nice “classic” book feel to it. It also kind of reminds me of an expensive desktop blotter (the kind you see on an executive desk where no one really does much work, haha).
In addition to checking out the layout of this site, please don’t forget to look through the content as well. There are some great resources available here. There’s a really sharp looking set of icons available for free (Milky) too. This is a site that I will be keeping an eye on periodically…it’s full of good stuff!
Popularity: 18%
Are you in need of some great quality, seamless patterns for backgrounds or other purposes? Check out the fantastic patterns available at Mujka.ca. Burcu has some wonderful, up to date, popular, and well priced patterns available there.
Popularity: 19%
All Things Designed has twelve excellent, seamless textures available for FREE. As I’ve said before, FREE is fits into my budget very nicely. The only caveat attached to these textures is a request that you pass the link on to other people who may find them useful too.
Again, as Web Design Ideas finds sites like this one, we want to share them with you. We consider our site as a kind of ‘toolbox’ for Web Designers. Lots of ideas, lots of links to good resources and information. We hope you enjoy it!
Popularity: 14%
I found an article today that contained some excellent examples of websites with great backgrounds. The article is posted at Six Revisions, Useful Information for Web Developers and Designers. Creating a good background is a critical component of setting the tone for any website. I like many of the examples he chose. In particular, I really like #8, #10, #18, and #20. Wow…can you tell I like earth tones?!
Now, I’m off to search for a good cork background (think bulletin board). I like the texture of cork and I think it makes a great background for some sites. So, if you have a good example of a cork background, let me know please. Thanks!
Popularity: 8%
Aah, a nice collection of vintage wallpapers. You can easily turn these into seamless background pattern tiles that would look great on a vintage style website.
To turn them intoa seamless tile just open it in Photoshop, crop out the unneeded sides and then do Filter > Other > Offset and offset the image by +20 horizontally first, then hide the seam using brush or smudge tool if needed. If you have cropped the image correctly, no blending may be needed. Once the it looks good horizontally, now offset it by +20 vertically and blend the seam. You’ve got a nice background tile.
The source site for this is: http://www.5qm.de
Popularity: 30%
The source site for this is: http://www.actionhead.com
I like the way the background is on this website. The design and the fixed style. This is a good example for this kind of design. Here is a CSS code for making the background fixed, so it doesn’t scroll with the page.
body {
background: #ffcc66url("graphics/bg.jpg") no-repeat fixed;
margin: 0 0 50px 0;
}
Popularity: 9%
How about a grass background? Well here is one, in a regular, dark and light version. Personally, I don’t think the light one looks very good but the dark and the regolar look useable. Let me know what you think.
Popularity: 6%
