30 Most Inspirational Light Web Designs

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!

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The 9513


Viva Viral Video


Zack Ginies


Squawk Design


Andrew Bradshaw Design


Viget


Jason Duerr


Built By Buffalo


Spanish-Portugese


Aaron Mentele


Simple Bits


Third And Grand


Red Relevant


Poccuo


Wishlistr


Mark’s Digital Farm


Simply Invoices


Fling Media


Basmati Tree


Designing The News


Cherry Bloom


I Love Typography


I’m Not Playing


Guilherme Neumann


Head Space


Karim Zurita


Groove Shark


En Route Film


Ryan Downie


Mollom

  • This post was written by Brian
  • Website: http://elitebydesign.com
  • About: Brian is a blogger and web designer at Elite By Design. He has been blogging for over a year providing quality design-related articles for the community.
28 Comments RSS
  1. Reply Katy CastroNo Gravatar said on July 7th, 2008

    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.

  2. Reply ThomasNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    Thanks for this list. Lots of great design

  3. Reply Mark CreativeNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    Great inspiration there, favourite would be Andrew Bradshaw, love the colours and feel. Thanks for taking the time to put together.

  4. Reply FubizNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    Nice list. Love Ilovetypo.

  5. Reply Kenny SaundersNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    Hey Brian,

    Great list here, thanks for adding my site to it.

  6. Reply SanderNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    Thank you for compiling this list, some great inspirational websites listed.

  7. Reply Pinkpetrol.comNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    I’d love to be featured on these types of things! :) hehe

  8. Reply SeanNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    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.

  9. Reply Ryan DownieNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    Thanks for the mention, means a lot to be featured with some of the designers on here.
    keep up the good work.

  10. Reply Mark ApletNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    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.

  11. Reply JYNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    Good list. A breath of freshair from the much overused cms template look.

    (no offense intended! :)

  12. Reply BrianNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    @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 :D

    @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 :D

    @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 :D

    @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 :P

  13. Reply Andy HowardNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    Awesome roundup!

  14. Reply ZhuNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    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.

  15. Reply mikko | inuNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    aaah nice list. Really love nice clean designs.
    Got some good inspiration for layout n’ info for my site.
    bookmarking site too ;]

  16. Reply AaronNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    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.

  17. Reply KyleNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    I’m incredibly honored to have found a place on this list among many great web designs. Thanks!

  18. Reply BethNo Gravatar said on July 8th, 2008

    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!

  19. Reply Mark ForresterNo Gravatar said on July 9th, 2008

    Thanks for the feature Brian. Honoured to be amongst such a distinguished list of websites.

  20. Reply About WebdesignNo Gravatar said on July 10th, 2008

    Nice list, but to me they do not all qualify for light design.

  21. Reply André FriedrichsNo Gravatar said on July 10th, 2008

    List list! But if you wanna see a really clean & light website… visit me! :) And i miss shauninman.com

  22. [...] Brian from Elite By Design has a collection of 30 most inspirational light web designs on his website. Some of them are in our inspirations gallery, and we will added more from the collection. View the collection. [...]

  23. Trackback: 30 Most Inspirational Dark Web Designs posted on July 9th, 2008

    [...] showing so much enthusiasm about inspirational light web designs, I thought it would be only fair to bring dark out into the spotlight. Dark web designs, when done [...]

  24. Trackback: ?lham al?nacak 30 hafif tasar?m : Hasan Yalcin posted on July 10th, 2008

    [...] ilham al?nacak 30 aç?k renk (light) web sitesini derlemi?, inceleyelim!Ayn? zamanda yine 30 koyu renk (dark) [...]

  25. Trackback: 30 Most Inspirational Designer Web Designs posted on July 11th, 2008

    [...] really gotten into this web design inspiration series I’ve got going. After starting with inspirational light designs and moving on to inspirational dark designs, I just couldn’t stop. This is my third web [...]

  26. Trackback: BlogBuzz July 12, 2008 | Webmaster-Source posted on July 12th, 2008

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    [...] 30 Most Inspirational Light Web Designs Here are 30 light web designs to get you inspired. [...]

  28. Trackback: 30 Most Inspirational Blog Designs posted on August 8th, 2008

    [...] web design post and I felt that it was time to get inspired yet again! After the amazing success of inspirational light designs and the phenomenal response to inspirational dark designs as well as inspirational designer’s [...]

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