Photography has always been crucial to a well-designed website. However, with so many tacky stock images available, 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. 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 on the internet. This way, you will have some inspiration the next time you want to give your site visitors a glimpse of everything beautiful in this world.
1. Sunset by Pixabay
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.
2. Seaport during Daytime by Pexels
An image like this inspires a sense of wonder and curiosity, making it 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 daily. In addition, all images found here are suitable 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.
3. Floral by Freepik
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 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.
4. Rose Petals by stocksnap.io
Flowers provide great nature backdrops for lifestyle, fashion, photography, and wedding websites.
With hundreds 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 under Creative Commons Zero licenses, you can copy, modify, and distribute all images for commercial purposes.
5. Textures Vol. 2 by unrestrictedstock.com (Tree Bark)
This texture pack, which is presented as a collection, includes background images of 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, images found here are available for products, online advertisements, packaging, video presentations, electronic design templates, and, of course, as a natural background for your website.
6. Cardinal by Unsplash
This beautiful nature background, highlighting bold colors 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 worldwide, Unsplash proudly announces that nearly 1 billion images are viewed monthly.
7. Valley of Fire by Travel Coffee Book
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.
8. Desaturated Red Tulip by picjumbo
Elegant images, such as the one found above, add a personal touch to your feminine, lifestyle, wedding, photography, or creative website.
Well-known photographer, Viktor Hanacek, was consistently turned down by other stock photo sites because his images lacked quality. Using this as motivation to start his 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 copyright issues since he allows you to do as you wish with his stunning photography.
9. Nature Bison by Burst
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. Burst includes many nature niches, such as trees, lakes, plants, flowers, outdoor animals, and seascapes, so Burst gives nature lovers a ton to choose from without being cliche.
10. Dragonfly by Gratisography
For the right type of website, an image such as the one above works seamlessly as it evokes a close-up of 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. Plenty of nature categories, such as animals, people, landscapes, seasonal shots, and seascapes, offer you the perfect nature background images for your website – at no cost to you.
11. PerseÏden Storm by Skitterphoto
Extend beyond your readers’ traditional view of nature with breathtaking photos of nature in its broadest 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 the number of downloads and likes. This way, you can use the most popular (or better yet, most unique and underused) images.
12. Cloud field grass by Foter
Nature is all-powerful. It is essential not to forget that the 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.
13. Cold Spring by Picography
Nature backgrounds like this always work well for lifestyle, feminine, eCommerce, travel, and personal websites. The difficult part is finding the most unique, free images.
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.
14. Trees by Jay Mantri
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 copyright violations. Plus, sell any templates, designs, packaging, etc., you create using these images.
15. Sunset over the forest by Kaboompics
Do you want free images and fun features to make your website stand out more than before? Then check out images like this sunset at Kaboompics and get exactly that.
With advanced search options, find nature backgrounds based on keywords, color motifs, layout (vertical or horizontal), category, and more. In addition, receive a free, downloadable color palette for matching other elements on your website to your chosen background image.
Final Thoughts
The selection presented here offers a glimpse of the extensive range of natural backgrounds available for free use on your website. While these backgrounds are among the top choices, it’s important to remember that photography is inherently subjective, and personal preferences will vary.
Exploring various websites that provide free stock images can help you find the perfect natural background to match your specific aesthetic and functional needs. Whether looking for serene landscapes, vibrant nature scenes, or subtle textures, these resources offer diverse options to enhance your website’s visual appeal.
Have you utilized any websites mentioned above for your natural background needs? Do you have a nature background on your website that deserves recognition? If so, please share your experiences and recommendations in the comments below!
Epicurean Theme