// Timber Inspiration - 20 Top-Notch Wooden Web Designs
// May 20th, 2008 & filed under ShowcaseDesign is very subjective, isn’t it? I mean, you only have to work with a few clients before you realise that what you thought was glaringly beautiful, isn’t to the satisfaction of the customer.
Of course, your initial nigh perfect design, tends to spiral downwards from there, in accordance with client instructions.
Personally, I have a preference for quality minimalism, skilful colour palettes, or designs using natural textures. Among the latter, are those designs, which use wooden textures to invoke different emotions to the visitor.
It’s not easy to pull off the ‘wooden’ look. In fact, it can look tacky very quickly, particularly if a tiled image is in use. However, some designers have manged to create some high-impact websites, using wooden textures.
Here are some of the best I know of. Please feel free to point to one’s I’ve missed, by leaving a comment.
1. The Things We Make - Nice work. It possibly helped land him a job at Carsonified recently.
2. Armen Thomassian - Not sure who this rare boy is, but this is his Garden Fence 
3. Writing Web Words - Clean, crisp, nice.
4. Lucy Blackmore - This is design gives the impression that someone creative is behind it. It’s therefore no surprise to discover that Lucy is an artist.
5. Nebon Media - Excellent use of perspective. Take a few minutes to look around this little studio tree house.
6. Wire and Twine - A more subtle use of wood, but clean and effective.
7. Red Blu - If all Flash sites were as creative as this, I might be encouraged to actually learn it!
8. Viget Advance - One of my favourite overall designs here.
9. Ed Did It - I’m not sure what Ed did, but I’d say he’s happy to say he created this design.
10. Lesly G - One of the best wooden backgrounds I found. Nice.
11. We Eatt - I told my wife about this site today. But, to be honest, I wasn’t pointing out the background!
12. Candes Projects - Nice work by Cristian, good use of transparency.
13. Ecstatic Media - Background works well with the pastel colours.
14. Designed by Anderson - I don’t normally like the lighter wooden backgrounds, but this is very clean, and well executed.
15. David Hellmann - This design has been up for a while now. Got to love it though.
16. Avenue Creative - No messing about with this portfolio.
17. Carsonified - How many times have you seen this design? It never grows old!
18. Nando Designer - Good work.
19. Henry Jones - Another one which has been around for a while, but I love it.
20. Happily Create - A little too orange for my liking, but I love the grain in this wood background.
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Wood really warms up the web. Nice list.
Wood / Timber backgrounds is still pretty fresh. This is a good list you got here - I also saw a similar motif in TV believe it or not (used as a background for text in a Car commercial). I think Web is leading the way for ground works in design.
Curtis,
Thanks. Have you ever used it in any of your designs?
Michael,
Yeah, if you follow the CSS galleries, you’ll see that quite a few are using wood in their designs recently.
Very nice post. These examples are fine example of how to incorporate natural textures into stunning design.
Armen,
Yup, used some wood in a template I sold for the header. Only time I’ve used it so far. I think the hard thing about using wood is making or finding the texture. I think unless it is a convincing wood texture it can really hurt the design.
Davey,
Thanks bro, and thank you for the Stumble too!
Curtis,
Yeah, it needs to look convincing, and many fail to do that. That’s why the tiled ones are particularly difficult to pull off.
Thanks for the mention! Since mine has been around a while, does that make me one of the trend setters
Henry,
Welcome my friend.
Well, when I was designing a site with wood a good number of months ago, yours was on of the ones I looked at. If you’re not a trend-setter, at the very least you’re the source of inspiration for some of us
Armen,
Thanks! That is good to know
Great post! Although I’m not really a wood fan, there are some interesting designs in your list. Avenue Creative wins for me (Dutch and good font usage)
Nice post! Carsonified in particular was a reference for me when I designed a site for Sawdust & Glass. According to CommandShift3 that has ranked pretty well against the competition, but there isn’t a ‘wood’ category specifically.
Nice list, I also personally love wooden backgrounds, it gives me some nice, warm (:)) feeling, just like I’m physically there. Can’t really explain it, but I just love it :).
Sander,
Avenue Creative? Really? I’m actually quite surprised by that. If I had to choose a favourite, it would be Viget Advance.
Ivan,
Welcome!
Maybe it’s the added depth and character, which draws you in? Like I said, I love well executed minimalism, but, I also like designs with depth. It helps to break up the oft mundane browsing of the web.
Armen Agreed about Viget Advance, it has a better design but it is a blog and AveneuCreative is a portfolio.
I like the very much font used by AvenueCreative (Meta Sans by Erik Spiekermann). I also like the high constrast which really brings out the portfolio.
Really nice collection.
Thanks for the mention! Glad to be among so many other great designs.
HEy! nice collection out here. Keep it up.
Hi webmaster!
Hi webmaster!
Hi webmaster!