Qotd

Starting with the Zune in 2008 and continuing with iOS, minimalistic design has become all the rage. The adoption of flat styles in lieu of gradients and glossy style effects may be widespread, but all that solid color has a drawback — it can be displeasing to the eye, especially on large monitors that fill the display with the website background color of choice. To break up this monotony, some website designers are using textured backgrounds instead of a plain color. When applied subtly, these textured designs can take a plain background and make it stand out from the crowd. Read on to find out where you can download some of the best textured background themes for your own site.

Applying a textured background is a two-step process. Just find a suitable pattern and then upload it or assign it as a background image according to your website platform. It’s beyond the scope of this post to walk you through the process of assigning a background as each CMS handles this differently. We will, however, point you to several sources where you can find textured themes that are worth downloading.

Transparent Textures

Transparent Textures has a simple array of textured backgrounds, but it has one killer feature — it allows you to choose a pattern, pick a color and then demo the texture on the site. It’s very useful to see the background in action. When you have selected your texture and color, you can use the “download” link to save the image file for use on your site.

Bgfons

Bgfons has a large repository of textured backgrounds that are categorized by type such as materials (concrete, wood, etc), patterns, nature and more. There are thousands of backgrounds, and all are available for free for use on your website.

Lost & Taken is a website dedicated to “Textures and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The site adds new textures on a regular basis and offered unique collections such as the subtle grunge and bokeh. The site has a comprehensive gallery

If you need some inspiration, you also can check out this list of websites that feature textured themes. Each site is a bit different and shows how you can add a bit of splash to a site and still keep a minimal design. Do you have any favorite textures or texture background websites? Please share them in the comments.