100 Useful Free Textures
- By Vitaly Friedman
- Posted in Graphics
- 19 comments
In Web design, texture is one of those elements that are widely used by designers, yet often hardly noticed by users. We don’t see them is because they usually remain in the background and supporting the overall design. Used primarily for background images, they need to fit to the overall design making the content easier to perceive.
Textures are not necessarily used in fashion-related or grungy websites; more often they are applied subtly to lend a personal tone to otherwise lifeless and faceless design elements. Textures are also often be used in combination with other elements such as typography, lighting and colors. They are most common for backgrounds, but are also use to fresh up a flat and boring appearance of design elements. Texture adds dimension to virtually any style of design, if applied properly. They also add a certain level of realism, creating a less formal, more inviting and aesthetically pleasing atmosphere that reflects our environment — after all, plain flat surfaces rarely exist in reality.
In this post we present an overview of some useful, freely available textures that you can download and use in your personal and/or commercial projects. Please read the license agreements carefully before using the textures — the license can change from time to time.
You can find some examples of textures applied to webdesign in various texture design showcases.
Grunge Style
Metal & Metallic Texture
Wood Textures
Cloth & Fabric
Drains Textures
Wall Textures
Paper & Cardboard Textures
Tiles & Patterns Textures
Miscellaneous
Free Resources For Textures
About the Author
Hetal Bhagat, 30 September 2010
Thanks for this awesome collection of textures… Don’t think we need to look anywhere else.
Cy, 30 September 2010
Wow, exactly what I needed for many of my projects! Thanks a lot for such a nice set!
Simon H., 30 September 2010
Thanks for the featuring!
Aaron Moody, 30 September 2010
Don’t think there was a texture that I didn’t like or couldn’t use! great list.
Rebecca, 30 September 2010
That is an excellent collection of textures. I had forgotten about some of those sites.
Andrija, 30 September 2010
These textures are amazing :) Great post man !
Darren, 01 October 2010
Nice stuff, thank you.
Childmonster, 01 October 2010
Wow~ Thanks a lot
element321, 01 October 2010
Thanks for sharing this list. I have building my textures slowly. These will surely help with that!
Mac_xime, 02 October 2010
Thank you so much.
This is HUGE !!
Myth Cloth, 02 October 2010
It’s wonderful, I appreciate that
Kanz, 03 October 2010
I use textures a lot so this post is very helpful. Cool set dude! thanks for the links also!
Greg Babula, 03 October 2010
These are great, thanks for taking time to make this list!
Personal Web Page Design, 04 October 2010
This is a really great post with a LOT of great resources. I am bookmarking this right now. Very nice!
Martin, 05 October 2010
That’s quite an impressive texture collection, thanks
Kay, 08 October 2010
Where can I read the license agreements? I can’t find them.
fracas, 08 October 2010
In checking out some of these, it’s clear that some are not free for use on anything other than a personal blog that does not earn an income… so use on personal blogs with ads or sponsors is even prohibited. It’s fine to add a disclaimer to check license agreements, but I must say it’s disheartening to waste time checking out items listed in a ‘free for personal or commercial use’ post only to be let down repeatedly. It’s a waste of time. Some of these are beautiful, but as art alone; stipulations for use are far too strict for them to be anything else. :-(
Vincent, 09 October 2010
Nice selection. Thanks :-)
ziezo, 01 December 2010
Love this selection. Thanks.