15 Free Nature Backgrounds

15 of the Very Best FREE Nature Backgrounds for Use on Your Website

Photography has always been a crucial element to a well-designed website. However, with so many tacky stock images out there, it can be tough to find imagery that enhances your website.

Fortunately, there are plenty of websites out there offering website owners free (and beautiful looking) stock images. Forget the days of adding a cheesy looking clip art image, or a commonly used stock image on your website. In fact, some of the free images I am going to share with you are so stunning, you may find it hard to believe they are free.

Today I am rounding up 15 of the very best free nature background images that can be found on the internet. This way, the next time you want to give your site visitors a glimpse of everything that is beautiful in this world, you will have some inspiration on hand.

1. Sunset by Pixabay

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This stunning image, with its stark contrast of colors, has the potential to inspire your readers about their natural surroundings.

All images found on Pixabay, including this one, are under a Creative Commons Zero license, meaning you are free to use them for both personal and commercial projects. More so, with over 960,000 stock images, you will easily find images, vectors and, illustrations for your website’s background image needs.

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2. Seaport during Daytime by Pexels

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Inspiring a sense a wonder and curiosity, an image like this is perfect for personal blogs, travel sites, and vacation rental sites.

Boasting the best free stock images on the web, Pexels adds new images to the already 30,000 existing ones everyday.  In addition, all images found here are good for both personal and commercial use. Lastly, find specific image types based on tags and search results, and create amazing products, sites, stories, artwork, and more – just as the Pexels community wants you to.

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3. Floral by Freepik

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Happiness, innocence, and youth come to mind when you see a nature background like this.

If you are looking for high quality, material design vector images, check out Freepik. Using signature flat design in nearly every image, your nature backgrounds will have a playfulness that is not always found in many realistic nature background images.  And, since hundreds of new vectors are added daily, and can be used for personal or commercial designs, you will never come up short on images to choose from.

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4. Rose Petals by stocksnap.io

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Flowers provide great nature backdrops for lifestyle, fashion, photography, and wedding websites.

With hundreds of of high resolution nature images to choose from that are added weekly, here at StockSnap.io there is no reason why you can’t find a great nature background. Additionally, coming in under Creative Commons Zero licenses, you are free to copy, modify, and distribute all images for commercial means.

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5. Textures Vol. 2 by unrestrictedstock.com (Tree Bark)

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Brought to you as a collection, this texture pack includes background images of things like rocks, wood, metal, bricks, and grit.

Unrestrictedstock.com has royalty free stock images, vectors, and even videos in a variety of niches, including nature. With no usage restrictions in place, images found here are available for products, online advertisements, packaging, video presentations, electronic design templates, and of course, as a nature background for your website.

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6. Cardinal by Unsplash

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This beautiful nature background, highlighting bold color in contrast to a stark and cold winter day, brings a sense of hope that spring is always just around the corner.

Unsplash features 10 new, high quality images everyday for you to do whatever you please with them. Moreover, known as an industry leading photography community with people contributing and sharing images from all around the world, Unsplash is proud to announce that nearly 1 billion images are viewed on a monthly basis.

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7. Valley of Fire by Travel Coffee Book

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A desert landscape portrays a different vibe than most commonly used nature backgrounds do, giving your website a road trip feel that is perfect for those with travel, personal, or even lifestyle websites.

If you are looking to share your best traveling experiences, boast of new hot spots in your local area, or simply want to share in the beauty that is nature with your loyal readers, check out the free nature images found at Travel Coffee Book. All images found here are under public domain meaning you can do whatever you wish with the images – copy, share, and modify – without any sort of restrictions.

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8. Desaturated Red Tulip by picjumbo

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Elegant images, such as the one found above, are great for adding a personal touch to your feminine, lifestyle, wedding, photography, or creatives website.

Well-known photographer, Viktor Hanacek, was consistently turned down by other stock photo sites in the past because his personal images lacked quality. Using this as motivation to start his own stock image site, Picjumbo, Hanacek now confidently claims that his images are downloaded millions of times by users all over the globe. And, since all images are Hanacek’s, there are never any copyright issues since he allows you to do as you wish with his stunning photography.

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9. Nature Bison by Burst

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A bold image of nature in its rawest form, such as this one, best suits personal, eCommerce, or masculine themed websites.

Brought to you by Shopify, Burst has amazing images can be copied, reproduced, modified, and used by you without any permission from the photographer. Expanding to include many nature niches, such as trees, lakes, plants, flowers, outdoor animals, and seascapes, Burst gives nature lovers a ton to choose from without being cliche.

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10. Dragonfly by Gratisography

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For the right type of website, an image such as the one above works seamlessly as it evokes a close up with nature that is often hard to find.

Gratisography, created by photographer Ryan McGuire, includes newly added images weekly that can be used for commercial or personal projects. There are plenty of nature categories such as animals, people, landscapes, seasonal shots, and seascapes offering you the perfect nature background images for your website – at no cost to you.

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11. PerseÏden Storm by Skitterphoto

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Extend beyond your readers’ traditional view of nature with breathtaking photos of nature in its widest sense.

Defined as a place to find, show, and share public domain photos, Skitterphoto offers users plenty of image categories and even a search function for finding the right nature background. More so, view the statistics of each image, such as number of downloads and likes. This way you can use the most popular (or better yet, most unique and underused) images.

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12. Cloud field grass by Foter

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Nature is all powerful. It is important not to forget that weather, and the beautiful images that capture these spectacular moments, are perfect natural background images for websites that require a specific overall mood.

Choose from over 220 million Creative Commons images found on Foter and include them on your site. Better yet, install the Foter WordPress plugin so you can search and embed images directly onto your website from the WordPress editor.

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13. Cold Spring by Picography

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Nature backgrounds like this one always work well for lifestyle, feminine, eCommerce, travel, and personal websites.  It’s finding the most unique images that are free to use that can be the difficult part.

Fortunately, Picography has an advanced search section for finding free stock images, all under Creative Commons Zero licensing.  Available to the public for use in any way imaginable, photographers Dave Meier and others give users a way to include quality stock imagery in website themes, designs, graphics templates, and more.

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14. Trees by Jay Mantri

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If you have a website that boasts a large hero image, includes bold featured images, or simply needs a good, solid nature background, Jaymantri.com has you covered.

Releasing new photos all the time, this straightforward stock photo gallery makes finding a good image easy. All images found here are under Creative Commons Zero licenses so you will never have to worry about infringing on copyrights. Plus, sell any templates, designs, packaging, etc. that you create using these images.

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15. Sunset over the forest by Kaboompics

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Do you want free images and fun features that will make your website stand out even more so than before? Then check out images like this sunset at Kaboompics and get exactly that.

With advanced search options, find nature backgrounds based on keyword, color motif, layout (vertical or horizontal), category, and more. In addition, receive a free, downloadable color palette for matching other elements on your website to the background image you have chosen.

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Final Thoughts

Altogether, this is only a small glimpse into the nature backgrounds available for use on your website free of charge.  And, while these backgrounds are seemingly some of the best out there, photography is always a subjective topic.

That said, exploring websites that provide stock images for free is sure to yield you the perfect nature background. Especially if none of the above-mentioned ones suit your fancy.

Have you used any of the above-mentioned websites for your nature background needs? Do you have a nature background on your website that you feel should have made this list?  If so, I would love to hear all about it in the comments below!

 

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About the Author

Lindsay Liedke is a freelance writer for hire that loves all things WordPress. When she is not writing she can be found spending family time with her son and two silly nephews!

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