Top 10 Web Design Inspiration Sources to Start Your Website in 2021

According to HubSpot, nearly 90% of web visitors tend to leave a website if they find it poorly designed. This only goes to show how much website design directly impacts your conversions.

However, creating an appealing website design can be challenging due to the unlimited design possibilities. There are numerous aspects to consider, such as the website layout, UX design, and current web design trends.

If you need some inspiration, here are the ten best website design inspiration sites to help generate some design ideas.

Top 10 Website Design Inspiration Sources of 2021

Here are our recommendations for the best website design inspiration sites to help you put together your website design ideas.

1. Behance

• Rating: 5/5
• Notable features: detailed search filters, Moodboards

Behance is a social network website meant for showcasing and discovering creative work. A wide range of design works is displayed on the page, from graphic to web design ideas.

Furthermore, this platform has one of the largest and most active creative communities in the world.

It has a detailed filtering system, including color, location, or time frame filters. For example, you can search for the most viewed dominantly blue web designs in the United States for this week.

The Tools filter allows you to search based on the software or hardware tools used to make the design, such as Adobe Photoshop or whether a graphic tablet was used.

Behance allows you to group your website design inspiration and references with its Moodboard feature. It lets you collect your favorite designs and organize them into boards.

Adding other people to be co-owners when using Moodboard can help you share ideas more efficiently. Make sure that your team members register as members first to be able to grant access.

The member registration is free. A member’s benefits include creating Moodboards and customizing their feed to only show the topics and creators they follow.

Pros

• Detailed search filters. Includes hundreds of filtering options to help you find the closest results no matter your query.
• Curated inspirations. Provides a daily “Best of Behance” design collection, selected by Behance’s curators, which can be useful for designers as their daily supply of design inspiration.
• Insightful Tools filter. Helps people discover the potential works they can create using a particular tool.

Cons

• Massive library of website designs. The abundance of references can make a user feel somewhat overwhelmed.

2. Best Website Gallery

• Rating: 4/5
• Notable features: CMS and framework filter, helpful tagging

Best Website Gallery is a collection of personal picks by designer and developer David Hellman. Hellman himself uses this site as his visual bookmark collection, while web visitors can use it as a source of website design inspiration.

Its library consists of “Site of the Day” collections. Every review page shows tags of styles, frameworks, and services used in the said website, allowing web designers to get insights on the elements needed to create such a site.

If you want to see other examples of websites that use a similar style, framework, or service, you can simply click on the tag to see the results.

The search filter includes search options by color, style, CMS, and framework. The CMS and Framework filters are valuable for web designers to estimate the possibilities of creating a website on a particular CMS such as WordPress or Drupal, or frameworks such as jQuery or Bootstrap.

Meanwhile, the Style filter covers many variables, including design elements like background videos and sticky navigation, website types such as portfolios or case studies, and design styles like brutalism or minimalism.

This site also has a links archive that contains articles from external sources related to web design.

Pros

• CMS and framework filters. Helps web designers to get insights into web design possibilities on particular CMS and frameworks.
• Full homepage design screenshot. Each “Site of the Day” review page contains notable screenshots of the website, including a full-window screenshot of the homepage, providing helpful insights about its website design choices.

Cons

• Limited color filter. There are only 16 color options provided, including monochrome and colorful options. If you want to find website design inspiration in lime green color, for example, you need to find it using green or yellow color filters.
• Less frequent content update. Even though it features a “Site of the Day” option, the content update doesn’t happen daily.

3. Awwwards

• Rating: 5/5
• Notable features: high-quality library, transparent scoring system, detailed search filter

Awwwards is a showcase of world-class web design and web development talents. It runs an award system, with web design experts from all over the world as the jury. This results in high-quality, inspiring website design examples featured in its library.

These experts evaluate the submissions based on a set of criteria, including design, usability, and content. With a transparent scoring system, all web visitors can see each jury member’s scoring for each benchmark.

Awwwards has a detailed filter system that can help visitors to find website designs accurately. The filters include Awards, Categories, and Technologies.

For example, the Awards filter provides you with a selection of websites based on the platform’s award winners, such as “Sites of the Year” and “Mobile Excellence”. This gives you more insights into the best practices in modern web design.

Meanwhile, the Categories filter helps find website design inspiration based on industry, like eCommerce, corporate, and blog-based.

Awwwards also has an extensive tagging system that helps find web design inspiration with similar elements. For example, when you see an entry with a great UI design and social media integration, simply click on the Social Integration tag to get more inspiration on the subject.

The Collections section provides you with a selection of archives based on specific topics, such as “Menu Inspiration” and “Best of Navigation”. Each collection is picked by the professional Awwwards team, ensuring the quality of each selection.

Pros

• High-quality website design ideas. All websites showcased here were evaluated by some of the best website design experts. Therefore, it provides you with the best practices in web design in a convenient and unique way.
• Detailed search filters and extensive tagging. Helps you find web design inspiration that matches your needs and niche.
• Informative content. Provides such content as learning resources, in-depth articles on the winning sites, and reports on web design trends.

Cons

• Limited color filter. The filter only provides ten color options, which means you’ll need to explore the search results yourself to find web design inspiration with the exact color you desire.

4. Abduzeedo

• Rating: 4/5
• Notable features: multi-discipline design inspiration, design tutorials

Abduzeedo is a design-focused digital publication. It’s one of the most-visited websites for design inspiration and tutorials.

The website provides insights from various design perspectives, including UI/UX design, branding, and editorial design. This allows designers to find inspiration from multiple forms of design, from graphic design to prints. This also helps them to create a more well-rounded solution.

The Tutorial page provides helpful learning resources such as 3D effects tutorials, Photoshop design tips, and the SwiftUI source code that you can apply to your website to get the look of an inspiring application.

The Collections page offers content based on topics, such as Design and UI/UX. It also has an Interviews page which consists of insightful interviews with top designers and an Office page with its office inspiration and gadget reviews.

Abduzeedo also offers ABDZ Weekly Digest, their free weekly newsletter, to keep you up-to-date with the latest design news.

Pros

• Multi-discipline design inspiration. Contains inspirations from various design fields, including visual design ideas and design-related articles, providing you with visual and design-oriented inspiration.

Cons

• Lack of a dedicated section for web design. There’s little information about the process that goes into designing a website. To find more content about web design, you’ll have to find it yourself.

5. Designspiration

• Rating: 5/5
• Notable features: search-based on palettes and hex color code, Collections

If you’re familiar with Pinterest, then Designspiration is like a design-focused version of it. It allows you to save design inspiration articles and organize them into collections.

Sign up to save images, create custom collections, and adjust your home feed to only show topics that you like.

On Designspiration’s homepage, you’ll find four tabs – Home, Popular, Everything, and Topics. Home contains the most recent posts from people you follow, Popular has the currently-popular images, Everything includes the most recent design entries, and Topics provides topic-based collections.

Topics offers collections based on various visual art fields and include several collections related to web design, such as landing pages, website templates, and responsive web designs. This section can help you explore web design inspiration in a more organized way.

Click on an image, and you’ll see a page that shows the source website, tags, and the color palette. The color palette can be your source of inspiration in building color combinations for your website.

Choosing color palettes is essential because it helps you maintain consistency across all your designs. Also, some color patterns carry particular meanings for you to explore as well. Click on any color in the palette, and it will show you other images in the same hex color code.

The search bar lets you pick colors from the color spectrum, resulting in more comprehensive color options, allowing you to find design inspiration in more accurate colors. Select up to five colors to search images based on color palettes.

Designspiration offers a premium account for $5/month. It will grant you access to create a Vision mood board, and it’s 100% ad-free. Vision boards itself is a digital mood board consisting of images, text, and objects that are useful for pitching ideas or giving presentations.

Pros

• Search based on palettes and hex color code. Useful to find design inspiration with the exact colors you desire.
• Search results show multiple forms. When you search a keyword, the search results will appear in four tabs – Saves, Collections, People, and Stock Photos. It provides multiple references for your queries.

Cons

• Free membership comes with advertisements. Only the premium account is ad-free.
• Lackluster search engine. There’s no detailed filtering system. However, it does have an exceptional color filter.

6. siteInspire

• Rating: 4/5
• Notable features: extensive tagging system, Collections

SiteInspire is a website that showcases the best website and interactive design.

Its search filter has an extensive tagging system, which helps you find the exact inspiration you want to look for by using the multiple tags provided. The tags cover Styles such as video background, grid layout, and unusual navigation, Types such as portfolio, shop, or corporate website, and Subjects like automotive, government, or food and drink.

The web design itself is simple and organized with a neutral color background, allowing you to focus on the web design showcase.

If you sign up as a member, you’ll be able to save and add your favorite website designs to your collections, which is useful when searching for web design inspiration for future reference.

SiteInspire also has a Directory page that can help you explore web designs based on their web designers or design agencies.

Pros

• Detailed tagging system. Search with multiple tags to find the most accurate results of your queries.

Cons

• Lack of other content. This website focuses on showcasing the best website design inspiration only.

7. The Best Designs

• Rating: 3.5/5
• Notable features: multiple screenshots on the homepage, WordPress themes review

The Best Designs is a website that provides inspirational website design examples. Visitors can filter the design entries by style, color, industry, or genre, helping them to find the closest web design inspiration to their query.

On the homepage, you’ll find a featured “Design of the Day” that displays multiple web page screenshots for the winner. This helps visitors understand what makes a website’s design unique and inspirational.

It also has a dedicated tab for reviewing high-quality WordPress themes available on the market.

Its Collections tab consists of listicles of the best web design inspirations. For example, the “41 Websites & Themes with Beautiful Landscape Photos & Video”, which shows web design inspiration for visitors who are attracted to nature-related visuals. This article provides insights on layouts that highlight landscape photos and videos and ideas on how a nature-related site can look like.

Pros

• Multiple screenshots to showcase a website. Visitors don’t have to click anything or navigate to another page to get the website design ideas.
• Insightful WordPress themes review. Informs people about the capabilities of mentioned website themes and provides web design inspiration for other platforms’ users.

Cons

• Less inspirational website design. The Best Designs’ website design itself is rather plain for a website that provides web design inspiration.
• Less up-to-date content. Even though it has “Design of the Day”, this website doesn’t update daily. This means there is less frequent content for you to get inspired.

8. Dribbble

• Rating: 5/5
• Notable features: detailed search filter

Dribbble is a platform where designers can share their works, grow their skills, network with each other, and find creative jobs. It always has new design entries, making it one of the best places to find web design inspiration.

Dribbble’s comment section, titled Feedback, is a valuable source for learning from other users and gaining insights into what kind of designs people appreciate.

This website has a detailed search filter. There are also several design fields to choose from, such as product design, typography, and web design. Enter your keywords in the search bar, then apply the filters to get more accurate results for your query.

The filters include Timeframe, Made With, and Color. For example, search for “mobile web design user experience made with dreamweaver this past month”, then select the color or enter the hex code.

In the Learn Design section, improve your design skills by joining webinars or static online courses taught by design industry experts. This can help generate some design ideas and also helps you to hone your design skills.

This platform offers a Pro plan for $5/month and a Pro Business plan at $15/month. The Pro plan includes instant design portfolio creation and access to shot scheduling, which allows you to upload your design works at a designated time.

The Pro Business plan includes all the previous plan’s benefits, plus business-related features such as access to the Project Board, which provides you access to contract work job postings.

Pros

• Detailed search filter. This helps find website design ideas more accurately.
• Massive source of inspiration. There’s a wide range of design works, from graphic design to web design. That means you’ll have more materials to get inspired from.

Cons

• Too many exciting designs. Dribbble can be distracting for some people due to its abundance of content.

9. Brutalist

• Rating: 4/5
• Notable features: unique library of web designs

Brutalist is the opposite of other web design inspiration sites – this website aims to share non-traditional web design ideas. It showcases a selection of websites with bizarre layouts, intriguing navigation, and unrefined web design. If you want to find unique web design ideas, Brutalist is one of the great places to start.

Websites featured in Brutalist belong in niches that may not appeal to the general public. Most of them completely ignore optimization tips and best practices of web design. However, depending on your website’s intent, this site can give some inspiration to provide a memorable experience on your website.

This website is a straightforward showcase, with each screenshot of the featured websites linked to the respective site. The only other activity that web visitors can do in Brutalist is to submit their own site through a submission link on Brutalist’s homepage.

Pros

• Unique library of web designs. It’s an excellent website for web designers who want to get insights into expressive web designs.

Cons

• Lack of other content. This website’s sole focus is to showcase sites with unique web designs.
• No social media. The only way to get inspiration from Brutalist is through the website. Interactions tend to be one-way, so if you’re looking for some discussion about non-traditional website design, you’ll have to find it on other platforms.

10. TemplateMonster

• Rating: 4.5/5
• Notable features: best practices of website design inspiration

TemplateMonster is a marketplace that sells website templates, themes, and other digital products related to web design. It’s an excellent source for website design inspiration since quality website templates usually apply the best website design practices.

Use the resources in this website as the starting point in creating your website design. Take inspiration from a theme, then make it to match your needs and niche.

TemplateMonster provides website templates and themes for various platforms – including WordPress, Shopify, and Bootstrap.

This website also categorizes its products based on industry, which is helpful because different industries may need different design approaches. There’s a wide range of industries covered here, from beauty to sports.

TemplateMonster also offers ONE Membership, the benefits of which include access to more than 80,000 premium items, commercial license, and technical support. The monthly plans start from $7.40/month, and the one-time fee costs $599.

Pros

• Massive library of website design resources. This website offers various design components like logo templates and UI elements. It provides inspiration for various elements of website design, such as ideas for the best font.
• Extensive design options based on industry. TemplateMonster ensures the various needs no matter the client type.

Cons

• Lack of search filters. Since this website’s primary purpose is to sell products, the search feature is product-based. Visitors can’t make queries based on design-related queries such as website type, design tool, or colors.

Conclusion

There’s a massive amount of web design inspiration out there for any kind of website idea. However, it may overwhelm you when you’re just about to start a web design project.

To help you find the best inspiration for website design, we have listed the best design websites for you. Here’s the summary of the list:

1. Behance – offers all the necessary tools to collect ideas for web design projects.
2. Best Website Gallery – great if your primary focus is on the web development side.
3. Awwwards – world-class entries with an insightful, transparent scoring system.
4. Abduzeedo – multi-discipline design news and interviews.
5. Designspiration – easy to save and organize images, extensive color filter.
6. siteInspire – includes a highly detailed search tool.
7. The Best Designs – particularly helpful for WordPress users.
8. Dribbble – highly active community from around the world.
9. Brutalist – eccentric library of websites.
10. TemplateMonster – resources to learn from the established design components.

We believe that with the resources we’ve provided, you’ll be able to create a great website design that suits your needs and niche.

If you have any suggestions yourself, feel free to leave us a comment below.