13 Sources for Background Patterns and Textures

Patterns and textures are becoming a bigger part of web design, and an increase number of resources are available for freebies in this area. Some are tools that will help you to quickly create your own background pattern, while others are sources of stock textures that can be used in your own work. Of the available options for finding textures, these are the best that I have found.

BgPatterns

BgPatterns is a really nice resource for quick experimentation. You can create a repeating background pattern by selecting an image, a color scheme, a texture, and you can even rotate the image. Rather than taking the time to create something from scratch in Photoshop or Illustrator, give BgPatterns a try and see if you like it.

Stripe Generator

Striped backgrounds are still pretty popular for web 2.0-style designs. If you’re looking for a striped background, Stripe Generator is your best choice. You select the colors, width of the stripes, shadow and the angle.

Lost and Taken

Lost and Taken is a site that publishes images of copyright-free stock textures. The textures are of good quality and there’s some variety as well. It’s set up in blog format and you can subscribe if you don’t want to miss out on future textures.

Wood Textures from Bittbox

Bittbox is one of the best places to find textures and other freebies for graphic design. This collection includes 9 hi-resolution wood textures that can be downloaded in a zip file.

24 Hi-Res Textures from Bittbox

Bittbox also gives away a great collection of these images. These hi-res textures were photographed at a 19th-century mansion.

Hi-Res Grungy Paper Textures

More free goodies from BittBox. These textures have been used by a number of designers in various Photoshop tutorials and they’re some of the best paper textures you’ll find.

Texture Kings

Texture King is a gallery site of free stock texture images for personal or professional use. Available textures include concrete, metal, glass, sand, grunge, and much more.

Grunge Textures

Grunge Textures is a gallery of images that are available to be used for personal use with a link back to the site.

Squidfingers

Squidfingers offers over 150 nice patterns to use for your own purposes. There are a lot of high-quality options for repeating backgrounds.

COLOURlovers

COLOURlovers is a popular site for finding color palettes to use in your designs, but they have also added a section for user-submitted patterns. You can search to find the pattern that’s right for you, and there are plenty to choose from.

Urban Dirty

Urban Dirty is a large gallery of free stock textures. The textures would be useful primarily for grunge-style designs and they are available in three different sizes.

Free 3Ds Textures

Free 3Ds Textures is another gallery of stock textures. There is a good variety of textures here, including grass, dirt, wood, paint and more, but nothing has been added in a few months.

CG Textures

CG Textures claims to be the world’s largest free texture site. There are plenty of textures to choose from, and they’re nicely categorized to help you find what you want.

For more design resources on DesignM.ag please see:

• 450+ Adobe Illustrator Patterns
• 45 Excellent Sets of Adobe Illustrator Brushes
• 30 Sets of High-Quality Adobe Illustrator Brushes
• 500+ Photoshop Textures Brushes
• Photoshop Actions