About
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Uncommon textures for your common design needs: TextureWell is a well of free, unique, high-resolution textures — all available under a Creative Commons license.
TextureWell is the three-way lovechild of Maria Popova, a good camera, and some free time.
The project was born out of frustration with the scarcity of free textures beyond the generic, formulaic offerings out there. So I spent a couple of years boycotting it all and shooting my own original textures, gradually building up a personal library of several hundred high-res images.
Somehow, the textures became more than images: They became an experience. Shooting the physical environment up-close, at its rawest and grittiest, made me strangely and indulgently aware of my surroundings, attentive to the finest detail, and just more present in the moment. Each texture I shot became rich in more than just color and contrast, it became rich in the story it told:
I have texture-hunted in the backstreets of Brooklyn…
….and the breathtaking beaches of Bali…
…and the barren deserts of Botswana…
…and the birch forests of Bulgaria…
…and plenty of places that start with the rest of the letters in the alphabet.
After friends and colleagues repeatedly bugged me for goodies from my collection to use in their own design work, I decided to open up the vault to the design community at large — TextureWell was born with a simple proposition:
High-resolution textures. From the must-have basics to the rare and unique. All free to download and use under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
(Which basically means you’re free to use the images any way you like in your own design work, but you can’t claim the original images as your own and/or sell them directly for profit.)
So roam around and explore. (You may need some pointers on navigation.) Enjoy. Thoughts, feedback, ideas, wish-lists, etc. are always welcome.
And don’t forget to grab our RSS feed to get fresh textures as soon as they’re up — usually twice a week.
