I’ve seen a lot of focus on dark designs in the last few months – including my own site redesign and Elite Platinum. However, I still believe that a lot of inspiration can still be found in light designs – with their sleek and polished look, light web designs can be downright amazing. Here are thirty to get your creative juices pumping. Enjoy!
For more web design tutorials check out the new tutorial site, The Tutorialist.































Katy Castro
July 7, 2008 at 11:56 pm
I love the crisp feel a light site has to offer. Though I prefer a wide variety of colors and styles, there is still plenty of room for this “airy” clean feel. Great collection of sites Brain.
Thomas
July 8, 2008 at 3:10 am
Thanks for this list. Lots of great design
Mark Creative
July 8, 2008 at 5:01 am
Great inspiration there, favourite would be Andrew Bradshaw, love the colours and feel. Thanks for taking the time to put together.
Fubiz
July 8, 2008 at 6:12 am
Nice list. Love Ilovetypo.
Kenny Saunders
July 8, 2008 at 6:13 am
Hey Brian,
Great list here, thanks for adding my site to it.
Sander
July 8, 2008 at 9:03 am
Thank you for compiling this list, some great inspirational websites listed.
Pinkpetrol.com
July 8, 2008 at 9:06 am
I’d love to be featured on these types of things!
hehe
Sean
July 8, 2008 at 9:34 am
Some of these sites are not really all that inspirational.
The worst offender is Wishlistr. It’s such a generic “web 2.0″ look.
There are several others that look so much like templates. Simply Invoices and Fling Media come to mind right away.
There are nice ones, but this list could have been narrowed down some.
Thanks for the list.
Ryan Downie
July 8, 2008 at 10:14 am
Thanks for the mention, means a lot to be featured with some of the designers on here.
keep up the good work.
Mark Aplet
July 8, 2008 at 10:29 am
Everyone has their own take on what is inspirational or not. Personally I like all these sites for various reasons. It’s a great list. Some of them appear on just about every “Top X” list out there. If I could critique anything above, it would be that I would like to see more original sites listed and not just the common favorites. But that’s being picky. Thanks Brian. Some real gems in the list.
JY
July 8, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Good list. A breath of freshair from the much overused cms template look.
(no offense intended!
Brian
July 8, 2008 at 1:53 pm
@Katy – Thanks for the comment. I agree, while I am more of a “dark design” kind of guy, I still enjoy the “cleanliness” that a light website has to offer.
@Thomas – No problem
@Mark – Andrew definitely has a nice looking site – I love the way he has organized his content – even just the little things like a right aligned navigation.
@Fubiz – I hope you find some inspiration here!
@Kenny – No problem – your site is very impressive.
@Sander – Absolutely
@Pink – Soon enough my friend. Perhaps in my next Dark article.
@Sean – I appreciate your honesty. In this post, I tried to cover a lot of ground with just 30 designs. I tried to fit in different styles, different secondary colors, dirty, clean, different content organizations, and different website purposes. I think that every web design here has some inspiration to offer somewhere – even if it isn’t in the design itself. Maybe a logo or a new way to place content? I agree with you though – not all of these designs are the most impressive ever – but inspirational nonetheless.
@Ryan – No problem – your site is very well designed. Keep it up
@Mark – Glad you liked the post – I have a feeling that a lot of people get tired of websites that repeatedly make it into “Top X” lists, but I feel that they made it for a reason. Anyhow, I will definitely work in the future to get some lesser known sites featured up here!
@JY – Thanks, and agreed. I get tired of “common” designs too – every now and then something unique really gets me excited
Andy Howard
July 8, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Awesome roundup!
Zhu
July 8, 2008 at 3:38 pm
I love the Basmati Tree design…
Black is beautiful but it doesn’t work everywhere. A lot of attention to small details is needed in order to make it user-friendly (i.e font not too white, careful balance of margins, greyscale etc) and I saw a lot of website forgetting that lately. Nope, not you, love your design, although I didn’t know your previous design, since I’m a new subscriber.
mikko | inu
July 8, 2008 at 4:41 pm
aaah nice list. Really love nice clean designs.
Got some good inspiration for layout n’ info for my site.
bookmarking site too ;]
Aaron
July 8, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Hey Brian, thanks for the (charisma18) include. Good to know I can still buy my way on to these lists.
Don’t tell anyone I said that.
Kyle
July 8, 2008 at 9:15 pm
I’m incredibly honored to have found a place on this list among many great web designs. Thanks!
Beth
July 8, 2008 at 10:20 pm
These are nice designs, but I had trouble finding one that wasn’t for a blog without using my imagination. Thank you for showing them!
Mark Forrester
July 9, 2008 at 5:20 am
Thanks for the feature Brian. Honoured to be amongst such a distinguished list of websites.
About Webdesign
July 10, 2008 at 5:39 am
Nice list, but to me they do not all qualify for light design.
André Friedrichs
July 10, 2008 at 9:28 am
List list! But if you wanna see a really clean & light website… visit me!
And i miss shauninman.com
Philwebservices
June 17, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Nice collections! Thank you for sharing!
Philwebservices
June 28, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Your list really enlightened my sense of sight!!!Thanks again for your post!