10 Awesome Free Website Background Image Resource List [2020]
Background Image is a complementary part of a website. Using a big website background image can help you create an inspiring and unforgettable experience for your website visitors. In modern web designing, this is a big trend to use full-screen images used as homepage background.
It really increases your website engagement rate as you can see the test result below.
Apart from capturing visitor’s attention, it helps in bearing information about your brand with minimal text.
According to Inc, posts with images typically perform 65% higher in engagement rates than text-only posts
Before choosing a website background image some factor that you should consider. Let’s check them one by one…
1. Choose Relevant Website Background Image
Typically, website background image selection is one of the most time-consuming moves when it comes to setting up a full-screen background on your website.
So where you need to put your focus?
To efficiently engage the readers into your website and carry information about your brand, you need to choose a picture that’s both relevant and exciting.
Let’s for example, if your niche is WordPress tutorials then a picture of you working with WordPress would be more efficient than a beautiful landscape. Again, if you can make that picture more dynamic & responsive it would be much better.
Helpful Resource: How to make dynamic responsive background images
In case you’re wondering where to find relevant website background images, you have a few options. The best choice is to use your very own image because this will ensure the image is relevant and that there are no licensing issues.
2. Use Optimally Sized Images
Another biggest concern while using a full-screen website background image is its size.
You should configure the image with proper dimensions, and at the same time, you must also pay attention to its proportions, resolution, and file size.
Here is a good example with all the details…
According to gs.statcounter, the most desktop screen resolution size is (global) 1366*768 pixels. So you have to take care of these stats while choosing your website background image…
Again the same stats says for mobile is 360*640 pixels.
According to Malama Online Marketing, the best size for the website background image is 1920 x 1080 pixels and the ideal ratio is 16:9. The dpi (dots per inch) should be at least 72.
These are some recommended stats only, but applying the incorrect image size can lead to pixilation, distortion, stretching, and other viewing problems. So always look for the optimal image to set as background.
Bonus Tip: You can take advantage of Cloudinary speed test tool which will guide you to use an optimal image for your website.
Additional Reading: How to fix optimize image issue occurred during GTmetrix test?
3. Delicately Examine Your Image Overlay
After setting up the background image your next task will be adding text overlays (such as company name and a few short attractive sentences) on the top of the background image.
While adding text overlays keep in mind that…
Add only limited text to explain about your website. If you will include a long paragraph with wide heading the result is you are taking visitor’s attention away from your website background image.
Try to keep your text short, sweet and better add an additional page inside the website with an internal link from the standalone page.
Keep in mind that text is easily readable, written with a simple font and with visible color.
Here’s an example…
Additional Reading: Best cloud image storage for photos in 2019
4.Test Your Site At Different Browser
Usually, we always use our favorite web browser while working on the website. But what important is to check whether the site works well on every browser across different devices or not.
So before you finish implementing website background image, it’s really essential to experiment with your design across different browsers.
There are more factors that you may have to take a look but these are the most essential whenever you have to choose background image for your website.
Now Let’s Find Out The Free Resources From Where You Can Use Your Website Background Images.
5. Free Website Background Image Resources
Earlier I have mentioned that using your own definitive image is a better option, however, when you should use a professional-grade image, and you haven’t prepared one by yourself, you may want to browse license-free image sites.
1/ Unsplash – Beautiful & free photos
Unsplash is a website assigned to sharing stock photography under the Unsplash license. The website is under Unsplash.inc which have their headquarters in Montreal, Quebec.
According to wiki Unsplash claims over 110,000 contributing photographers around the world and generates more than 9 billion photo impressions per month on their growing library of over 810,000 photos.
2/ Pixabay – 1 Million + Sunning Free Image
Pixabay.com is a worldwide website for sharing photos, drawings, vector graphics, and film footage under a proprietary license. Hans Braxmeier & Simon Steinberger GbR are the owner of Pixabay, which was established in 2010.
As of November 2017, Pixabay offers over 1,188,454 free photos, illustrations, and vectors and videos, according to Wikipedia.
3/ Pexels – Free Stock Images
Pexels provides high quality and completely free stock photos which are licensed under the Pexels license. In Pexels all the photos are nicely tagged, you can search for individual images and also easy to discover through their discover pages.
You can contribute with Pexel too using this link [Contribute]
4/ Pikwizard – Free Stock Photo & Royalty Free Images
Recently I have found this website “Pikwizard” with some cool high quality image collection. The images are well organized and beautifully tagged so that you can find the right image for right purpose.
The interesting fact that images are completely unique than other free stock photo storage. You can like and share any image very easily with your friends. The user interface of this website is really handy. Moreover, you can edit images according to your requirement inside Pikwizard.
Looks like this can be another great source of images for your website background.
5/ Gratisography – Free High Resolution Image
Like the earlier Gratisography also provide high resolution images from millions of professional photographers around the world. Most of the images available in this website are so creative and can help you find the essential website background image.
Gratisography was founded and created by Ryan McGuire.
6/ Little Visuals – High Resolution Free Stock Images
From Little visuals you can download high resolution landscape images when you need free website background images specially landscapes.
This website is live but no further uploads for over a year now. The young man who created this website died in 2013 and now his family runs this website. They are also fundraising in the hope to provide a number of schools or sports areas with portable defibrillators in the creator’s (Nic’s) memory.
If you have visited their website or used their photos you can consider a small donation towards the Hand on Heart Charity.
More information is available on Little Visual’s homepage.
7/ Canva – Browse Millions Of High Quality Images
Canva is another great option when it comes to high-quality stock photos to use for beautiful website background image. With Canva you can find images from seventeen different categories.
I personally prefer images of Canva for mobile resolution and can be really useful if you are creating a separate version of your website (especially for mobile).
8/ StockSnap – Beautiful Free Stock Photo
StockSnap is another great community which the website stocksnap.io belongs to. Lot’s of amazing stock photo collection are there and you can find a great image for your website background easily.
You can download photos in many different resolutions as per choice. The images
9/ Business Images – Royalty-Free Stock Photos in HD
Business Images is another website with high-quality stock images but only for the business-related niche. These images are useful for website contact pages, financial websites, free web design software, and software development companies or analytics related websites.
You can download both high-resolution and low-resolution images in different resolution-set for free.
10/ FreePhotos – Free Stock Photos
If I don’t mention FreePhoto, this list won’t be completed in terms of resources to free website background images. This is a fantastic website where you will see a great collection of random images ordered in a trendy-blog style.
Pictures are very detailed and captured from unique angles. So these images have the ability to catch your site visitors eyes easily. So honestly, photos from FreePhoto can certainly increase your website engagement rate.
Conclusion:
So when you have to create a beautiful WordPress website with a wide background image these are the tools and information are going to help you a lot.
Are you planning to add a background image on your current blog or website?
I’m curious to know if you have such a plan to do anytime soon. Please let me know if this article helps you while setting up your background image, in the comment section below.
BONUS – Editing with Instasize – Creative Image Editing Toolkit
If you are working on your website through your smartphone, you can use advanced photo editing apps like Instasize to resize your images for optimal mobile display. You can also style and overlay your text onto your background image using Instasize’s text tools. Download the app on iOS or Android.