30 Most Incredible Textures for Vintage Style Design
One of the most important aspects of a good vintage style design is the use of authentic looking textures. Since most of you probably don’t have time to browse the local antique shop, and your grandmother’s attic is miles away, we’ve put together a list of some of the best vintage textures we have ever seen.
All of these are free, but make sure to read the terms before using.
You are sure to find a use for these textures, but if you want more, check out the best texture packs from 2008.
Vintage XIII
+texture
Vintage Musk
Vintage V
Simple Vintage
vintage strip texture
Vintage Grunge
map texture 1
Vintage IV
Victorian grunge V
vintage polka dot texture
Victorian grunge IV
Vintage Musk 3
Grunge Wallpaper 1
Use This 52
Beauty 96
Beauty 95
Vintage Texture II
Art Nouveau Pattern Texture
Antique Script Texture
music texture 4
vintage diamonds
Vintage II
Vintage XV
Vintage XVII
Vintage Wall Paper Texture
Grunge Wallpaper 2
Cracked Wallpaper
Victorian Wallpaper
Vintage XII
Related Posts
Here's some other articles that you will definitely find useful.
10 Places to Get Photoshop Actions
New Free Textures for your Delight
25 Free Textures for your Delight
12 Free Textures from Flickr
10 Free Textures from Dribbble
87 comments
Raymond Selda
January 14, 2009These are really nice. Thank you
Ondrej Vertat
January 14, 2009Amazing collection, thanks!
Niki Brown | The Design O'Blog
January 14, 2009ohhh nice! Ill have to use some of them for a fun project in the future! Thanks for taking the time to find all the textures!
Chris W.
January 14, 2009I am always looking for good free seamless patterns. Those are often quite a bit more useful. But good post overall.
Derek
January 14, 2009Beautiful list. Thanks for sharing.
Zak | Integrated New Media
January 14, 2009pretty amazing list! always love when someone else can do the hard work and find great textures!
Adelle
January 14, 2009These are beautiful, love this collection. I see some site enhancements as well since last time I checked…looking amazing Henry!
Richard Andersson
January 14, 2009Nice! I like the roccoco textures the best. They look very authentic!
Thanks!
Aaron Irizarry
January 14, 2009Wow! these are beautiful. Thanks for posting them
~ Aaron I
David Perel
January 14, 2009I am not usually crazy about list posts (1 million red websites etc) but this is an absolute keeper.
Great post and some beautiful textures here. Bookmarked for sure.
Henry
January 14, 2009@Chris W – Yes the seamless ones are nice, but those normally don’t have all of the irregular details that give textures their character.
@Adelle – Thanks! I’m finally finding time to add the things that I had to leave out when trying to get the site launched.
Chowder
January 14, 2009Im a fan of the art style of a new cartoon show on Cartoon Network called Chowder. instead of coloring in their figures they use alot of these ornate vintage textures and its really well done. if you like this you should check it out
azdaja
January 14, 2009these are gorgeous! I am definitely taking a few. These are worth figuring out how to use textures!
Vin Thomas
January 14, 2009AWESOME LIST!
Dainis Graveris
January 14, 2009very useful textures!! this kind of resource is really rare, appreciated list!
andrew
January 14, 2009great list. Polka dot pic is not linked to the correct URL. Please fix, thanks!
Eneza
January 14, 2009Check out those ancient beauty. Great Collection.
projectautomatika
January 14, 2009amazing textures! thanks!
Nathan Hangen
January 15, 2009Incredible collection. Thanks.
iris
January 15, 2009hello !
I’m korean…..
photoshop에 쓸게요…
(korea 말로 해서 sorry)
highgirl
January 15, 2009amazing textures! thanks!
kim min
January 15, 2009goooooooooooood ~!
from. south korea..
http://www.cyworld.com/01024690804
Lukes
January 15, 2009Wow , great stuff. Tweeted
Jo
January 15, 2009Beautiful textures, will definitely come in handy
Patternhead
January 15, 2009Love those vintage patterns. Thanks for sharing
Mr.Jade Cadelina
January 15, 2009I can’t stop coming back to this page. I’ve tested them out as WordPress theme backgrounds. These textures are amazing.
Thanks again for a great list…
Sineload
January 15, 2009These textures are great. Thanks for posting this.
M
January 15, 2009Gorgeous textures, thanks for the list!
matthew
January 15, 2009My urban textures. Someone may like them here
http://lostbrooklyn.org/texture_gallery/
guido
January 15, 2009Great. They are all fantastic.
http://www.icositetrahedron.com
Lucidles
January 15, 2009You’ll get nothing but praise from me. Wonderful designs.
Les
Fedeweb
January 15, 2009Wow great list!! there are two links error..
Vintage Wall Paper Texture and Grunge Wallpaper 2 are wrong..sorry for my bad English..
Logo Factory Design Studio
January 16, 2009Outstanding textures and backgrounds. There’s a dew that remind me of the wallpapers in my Grandma’s house. A very long time ago…
Kacey
January 17, 2009Wow, these are FANTASTIC! Thank you so much, just what I was looking for!
mel
January 17, 2009Nice collection – though some more convincing than others! I have a ‘vintage scratch’ high res brush set free on my blog for creating these sorts of effects. Its here: http://www.melsbrushes.co.uk/?p=207
Lindsay Bein
January 17, 2009If you like these patterns I just did a project with seamless patterns in a 2d class. Here are the steps…
-draw a macro picture of an intense object with a lot of parts. Make sure the project is in a perfect square
- take thise project and reverse the colors.
- take these two and expiriment with them in radial symmetry.. repetition is key.. and using photoshop it is easy to re-create your favorite things!
The brainstorming for my final project is posted as my website.. it isn’t vintage but using that idea try it yourself!
Linda
January 18, 2009These are really nice… thank you!
Linda from http://cookingtipoftheday.blogspot.com/
Paul
January 18, 2009Some really nice textures there. I will try and incorporate these into my next project. I have spent a little bit of time getting into textures recently with my new site http://prandall.com – it is the first site where I have really used something other than a gradient.
It was Jason Beaird’s book The Principles of Beautiful Web Design that really sold to me the importance of textures to a website.
Timothy
January 21, 2009I’m liking the vintage polka dots
Martin Lewis
January 22, 2009Cheers. I’ll def be using some of these.
When will it end?
January 22, 2009When will this obsession with “vintage” background design die out?! I for one don’t want my website to look like my bathroom’s old, mildewy wallpaper. Let’s just let another handful of crappy bands use this as their MySpace backdrop and call it done. Sound good everyone??
E.J. Semeijn
January 23, 2009I like the pictures and I also think it’s time to move on to the next design trend. I’ve had it with the grunge stuff.
Haider Raza
January 24, 2009good textures ….. like the Use This 52
Xfar
January 24, 2009Nice collection although I like more modern stuff
manoballs
January 25, 2009Hey! I like your site and the images are beautiful. i will use some of these texture to build on my future projects. Cheers
CrankyKid
January 26, 2009Killer textures.
check out this other site I found.
http://www.texturesnob.com/
Dominical Costa Rica
January 28, 2009Fantastic textures. I especially like the parchment ones and will use them a lot. Thanks for the hard work.
STILTEC
January 30, 2009Great Idea
Free Stuff
February 1, 2009Great textures, thanks for having it
Katrina Costedio
February 3, 2009Thanks so much. You are awesome.
I am so glad I found you.
4 Trackbacks
[...] you’ve probably figured out, I love designing with texture. I also love sharing textures here on WDL. When done properly, a texture used as a background can add depth and set the over all [...]
[...] on WDL, I’ve shown you where to find plenty of amazing free textures, and we’ve given you some exclusive textures as well. Now that you have access to all these [...]
[...] past articles, we’ve shown you where to find plenty of great textures for vintage and retro style design. So now if you’re wanting to learn some techniques to put [...]
[...] 30 Most Incredible Textures for Vintage Style Design [...]