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Web design inspiration: Top 5 sources used by pro designers

Alexandra Mercier, April 22, 2020

After years of designing websites, I know how important it is to feel inspired before starting a new web project.

With the overwhelming number of “web design” resources, some designers find themselves scrolling through thousands of beautiful websites, without ever settling on a creative direction for their project.

Just like searching for stock images, the key to finding inspiration online is browsing resources that offer:

In this guide, our team has reviewed the top 5 sources where you’ll find inspiration for your next web design.

#1 Awwwards

Number of designs:
11,000+ websites

Search / Filtering options:
Awards, categories, tags, technologies, colors, countries

Overview:
Awwwards has one of the largest collections of beautiful website designs. Creative professionals from around the world submit their designs to Awwwards in order to compete for site of the day, month, or year. Each website is rated based on design, usability, creativity, content, mobile experience, and development quality.

Although the designs are truly inspiring, they can be very difficult to recreate unless you have extensive experience with code or are working with a visual website builder like PageCloud.

Pros:

Cons:

#2 Site inspire

Number of designs:
7,500+ websites

Search / Filtering options:
Styles, types, subjects, platforms, search

Overview:
Site Inspire offers a simple 3 column layout to help you quickly scroll through their eye-catching websites. You can click on one or several tags in order to filter down the number of displayed designs. Everytime you select a tag, the system automatically removes irrelevant tags so you are never left with “no results”.

Pros:

Cons:

#3 Best Website Gallery

Number of designs:
2,500+ websites

Search / Filtering options:
Colors, CMS, style, framework

Overview:
David Hellmann, the creator of Best Website Gallery, has been publically bookmarking his favorite website designs since 2008. Each site in his collection is tagged by color, style, cms, framework, and service to help users find what they are looking for. Thanks to a great user-experience and 2,500+ of the most visually appealing websites around, Best Website Gallery is a go-to resource for every designer.

Pros:

Cons:

#4 Webdesign Inspiration

Number of designs:
2,000+ websites

Search / Filtering options:
Industry, types, styles, colors, and device layout

Overview:
Webdesign Inspiration showcases thousands of live websites as well as a number of templates sprinkled throughout. With powerful filtering options and the ability to view desktop, mobile, and tablet views of each site, it’s a great resource to get your creative juices flowing.

Pros:

Cons:

#5 Pinterest

Number of designs:
100,000+ website pins

Search / Filtering options:
Keywords, pins, videos, people, boards

Overview:
As the largest visual search engine, Pinterest provides you with thousands of inspiring “pins” based on your target keywords. Thanks to lazy loading, you can scroll to reveal additional web designs, instead of clicking on “next page” like many of the resources on this list. Another difference with Pinterest is that many of the designs are mockups made with desktop publishing apps as opposed to live websites. Pinterest also helps showcase amazing creations from design communities such as Behance and Dribbble.

Some of our favorite boards:

Gustavo Girard:

From up North:

Pros:

Cons:

Bonus - Instagram

Number of designs:
6,000,000+ posts

Search / Filtering options:
Hashtags, accounts

Overview:
Just like Pinterest, Instagram is a visual network used by designers around the world to showcase their best stuff. If you’re looking to add a steady stream of inspiration in your daily routine, we’d highly recommend following some web design accounts on Instagram.

Although you aren’t scrolling through live websites on Instagram, you will be presented with some of the highest quality mockups and visual treatments that are sure to help you overcome creative blocks.

Some of our favorite boards:

Daily Web Design

We Love Web Design

Zero Toone

Pros:

Cons:

Final thoughts

Looking at beautiful content is a great way to spark your creativity.

However, keep in mind that creating a quality web design is much more than combining stunning images and great fonts.

In order to create a professional grade website, you need to consider your client’s business goals and how the website’s design, content, and user experience will help them achieve success online.

Written by

Alexandra Mercier

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