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Home » The Famous Blog » Add a Little Texture Design to Your Site Background and Logos

Add a Little Texture Design to Your Site Background and Logos

November 18, 2010 - Last Modified: February 14, 2013 by James Johnston 2,107

Texture Design

Textures are a great way to add contrast to your websites, images and design projects. Textures can be almost anything from nature or man made as long the texture image is of high quality.  But, finding high quality images can be tough and even tougher for non designers.

In the design world, high quality textures are in demand and they look all over for good textures. To help with the search, design sites offer lists of great textures. These collections of backgrounds and patterns are used by designers to give a flat image a little contrast.

Spice your sites and Design Projects

You do not have to be a designer to take advantage of using textures in your design work or if your into making your images and logos for your websites you help your designs look by adding textures. It easy to use textures or design. The easiest way to use them, is to open up your favorite image editor and create a new project. Then place your texture as the bottom layer.  Add whatever color you need to make it work for your design. Once you get the color set, set the blending mode so the texture “bleeds” through. If you can’t find that perfect blending mode, you can always play with the opacity (transparency) so you can see more of the texture. If anyone is interested in how to add texture to a design project, I can create a quick tutorial.

If you are not sure by what I mean by adding texture to a background image for a website, just look at Famous Bloggers background and the footer image. Hesham does a great job at adding contrast to the site. He adds just enough to it, that its not distracting, and it still gives off a professional look to the site.  For more of an intense use of textures, check out Colorburned. They use several different textures to give the site a grungy well warn look to the site. They even added texture to the social media icons.

Where to find Textures

There are a lot of sites out there, you can find textures almost anywhere, but a lot of times, they are not free, or they may not be what  your looking for. Today, I have compiled a list of my Favorite sites that list some of best high quality textures pack available for free. I found most of these textures through DesignsGizer, TheWebBlend, and several other sites that I frequent. Make sure to read the licensing agreements and understand them before using them. Some of them ask for link backs to their sites, must get permission to use commercially, or they will not allow you use it at all if the design is for commercial site.

1. 31 Most Colorful Collection Of High Quality Free Texture Packs

high quality texture packs
High quality texture packs

A great set of high quality textures, check out the 31 most colorful collection of high quality free texture packs

2. 40 Fresh Free Texture Packs

free texture packs
free texture packs

This texture collection has a large variety of textures. It has a little of everything including; grunge, water, paper, and vintage textures. check these 40 fresh free texture packs

3. Free Downloads: A Collection of Rusted Textures

Collection of rusted textures
Collection of rusted textures

Looking for a rust texture or adding rust like color theme to your design project? Check out this texture collection, its nothing but rust textures.  There are so many to choose from, you might not be able to pick just one for your project. Here is the Free Downloads: A Collection of Rusted Textures links.

4. 100 High Quality Wood Textures for Web Designers

Want to add wood texture to your design? Finding the perfect one is hard. There are so many choose from, some of them are high quality, while others, no so much. This collection has over 100 wood textures to choose from. Here are 100 High Quality Wood Textures for Web Designers

5. 50 excellent collection of paper textures

texture paper
Texture paper

Lately, I have seen a trend where websites are adding paper textures to their blog content area. This gives the site a vintage or grungy feel. Selecting a good paper texture is very important for this type of design. Using the wrong texture  will give the site an unfinished look. Check out this collection of fifty paper textures. Here is the link of 50 excellent collection of paper textures

6. 100+ Fabric Textures

fabric textures
Fabric textures

This is a great collection of fabric textures and patterns. Here are 100+ Fabric Textures

Final Thoughts

I am a big fan of textures. I use textures in most of my design projects, and I am always on the look out for great collections to bookmark and save for later use. Before, I started using textures, I hated having to create texture in my design. Sometimes it took hours to get a certain look for a design. After I started using textures I now spend less time on that part of the design and I can spend more on other parts of  the design.

Do you use Textures in your designs or on our websites? As mentioned before, if you are interested in learning how to add textures to your backgrounds, let us know and we can start working on some tutorials for you.

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Filed Under: Design, Freebies

About James Johnston

Follow @element321

spends most of his free time using social media and loves to teach others about design, web development, CSS, SEO, and social media. He is addicted to Wordpress, and social media. You can reach him website, Evolutionary Designs Blog.

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{ 35 Responses }

  1. Abhi Balani says:
    Ahh. I'm glad I found it. I am working with Photoshop, these days, for logos, graphics for my site. These textures will really help me to get some great backgrounds. BIG thanks.
  2. Mark says:
    Personally, I hardly ever touch the graphical design of any site, but I will say this...when it comes to setting up sites for people or businesses, they absolutely demand the best of the best of the best when it comes to appearance and they will ask for all types of textures and designs, so learning how to do this and having a library of resources as you mentioned, James, is invaluable. Thanks for the nice article. Mark
  3. tracy ingram says:
    Thanks for the info. my blog is looking a bit, well wordy with some images thrown in. I really need to get a logo together.
  4. anish says:
    I'm impressed! what a great resource.You have linked to many useful websites.I have bookmarked this page for future reference :)
  5. Chris says:
    My Blog is about selling roof cleaning, and we do this with before and after pictures as BIG as possible. Blogger allows a simple 2 column theme where the main column is 3/4 of the page! This allows the big before and after roof cleaning pictures. Blogger does what we need, but the stuff you posted is really cool, just not for us. I bet many who require this will love this post. I really enjoyed it :)
  6. TJ McDowell says:
    I was thinking that designers often took pictures of textures in the real world to use too. Is that the case with you? It seems like this could save quite a bit of money instead of always buying textures from other people.
    • element321 says:
      TJ, Some designers, will take pictures for textures if they can. I do a mixture of both. However, I tend to like high quality images to start with. I only have a 12 mega pixel Canon point-and-Shoot camera. So a lot of times, the quality isn't as good as I like it. But, if its something that will be blended with other colors and textures, then the point-and-shoot will work. Just need to do a little PhotoShop touch up and color correction.
  7. DebG. says:
    Great resource! Thanks! And, yes, I am interested in this ---> "if you are interested in learning how to add textures to your backgrounds, let us know and we can start working on some tutorials for you." Deborah
    • element321 says:
      Hi Deborah, I will start working on some tuts very soon. They will be added to the list of tutorials, that I am planning to write...
  8. Jasmine says:
    Lovely textures. They certainly make a design or a blog's background more attractive and interesting! I love those high quality textures from smashingapps.com.
  9. Isabel Rodrigues - Pro Blogger Journey says:
    Nice points there and also thanks for sharing the links.
  10. Kimi says:
    Hi James, I am a fan of nature stuff, love the wooden texture. Those are cool for backgrounds, thanks for the effort listing these cool free stuff!
  11. Blogfather says:
    Really like the colorburned site you linked to. Their design is quite generic but unique too. Your DFW site is pretty awesome too. Really simple and straight to the point.
  12. Hunter says:
    Thanks for sharing. Its always nice to have places to view textures, before you use them.
  13. Dennis Edell says:
    Something I'll definitely pass along to my designer for my new blogs, thanks James. :)
    • James Johnston says:
      Thanks Dennis. :)
  14. Rahul says:
    Great list , thank you , i do take care of appearance , better designs bring more people !! thank you for sharing this
    • James Johnston says:
      Thanks Rahul.
  15. Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach says:
    Love textures (and gradients, don't forget about gradients!). They can really make a blog post come alive. Thanks for sharing!
    • James Johnston says:
      Gradients are great. I normally create my own. :)
  16. Hung says:
    Very cool i just sent this post to my friends, praphics designer
    • James Johnston says:
      Thanks Hung!
  17. Mani Viswanathan says:
    I find it very irritating to design a completely new texture, everytime I have to design a banner, bg. These prestyled textures will help me a lot. Thanks. Bookmarked this post :)
  18. Patricia says:
    Hi James Very interesting post. Do you have to have a Mac and photoshop to achieve this? I don't have either! Also I only know basics nothing techie so would I still be able to do this on my WordPress blog? Thanks for sharing with us James. Patricia Perth Australia
    • Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach says:
      Patricia, you can download GIMP from http://www.gimp.org - it's the open source answer to Photoshop and it's free.
      • Patricia says:
        Thanks Barbara hope it is super easy to understand. I'll know where to come if I get stuck. You geeks rock :-) Patricia Perth Australia
    • James Johnston says:
      Hi Patricia, You do not have to use Photoshop. Its just preferred by designers and photographers. There are a variety of software you can use. GIMP is the next best thing. But its a bit confusing to learn. Another good one is Paint.Net and Picasa by google that works great as well. It isn't to hard to create the textures or even using a repeating texture where you do not need to modify if it looks good with your theme. Adding to WordPress might be an issue. It all depends on your theme. If has an upload background option, then you can do it easily. If not, you might have to get some help modifying the code to make it work on your theme.
      • Patricia says:
        Thanks James. That's why I always say the geeks rock and are geniuses IMHO. Soon as you mention the word code I know it is out of my league! I'm glad I've got some techie friends so if I want to change anything on my site; they usually offer as I'm not into the techie side of things in any way, shape or form. Patricia Perth Australia
  19. Sujith says:
    Microsoft Powerpoint texture backgrounds are also good. It is customizable too.
    • James Johnston says:
      Some of them are good. But you have to look at the licensing. A lot of Microsoft products such as their clip art and textures can only be used for individual projects such as a presentation or an office document. The texture sites and articles listed here, have the texture usage licensing set as creative commons with commercial use. Or ask permission and link back to where you got the texture from. Using images and textures in your work that you do not know the licensing is not a good idea. If use them and you have not bought the rights or have permission (even if you source it) may be held liable for lose of earnings.
  20. Caleb says:
    Cool, but it would be great if you append this post to include basic instructs on how to install these background textures :cool: For example, once a zipped file is saved would the blogger then unzip, upload to a website folder, then use the destination of that folder as background image url to be pasted in their blog css file or what :?:
    • James Johnston says:
      Caleb, I am working on a couple of tutorials, not sure when they will be finished and uploaded. But thanks for the idea. I will have to add your idea to my list of tuts to do...
  21. Phil says:
    Another awesome article here on FamousBloggers! I love to use textures in my designs it makes the layout look so much nicer. Nothing too heavy, just something that looks cool is good! Nice list of texture websites too James!
    • James Johnston says:
      Thanks Phil! I love using them to. When I am trying to figure out the design. Sometimes I hit up the texture sites for inspiration.

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