What are the best websites for design inspiration? We asked 12 experts to share their favorites—discover their top picks below.
- Explore Cafe and Hospitality Design
- Discover Diverse Creative Projects on Behance
- Find Brand Inspiration on Pinterest
- Visit Esperecamino for Timeless Aesthetics
- Draw Inspiration from Artstation
- Gain Insights from UX Collective
- Browse Architectural Digest for Luxury Designs
- Get Practical Ideas from Mobbin
- Track Trends on Awwwards
- Explore Kitchen Renovations on Houzz
- Use Dribbble and Midjourney for Inspiration
- Check Footer.design for Web Design Ideas
Sources of Inspiration from Experts
Explore Cafe and Hospitality Design
As an architect, photographer, and web designer, I’m always in search of inspiration, which led me to create three online publications: bestcafedesigns.com, tinyhousezine.com, and prefabprojects.com. These platforms reflect my interests in niche areas of design and allow me to share this inspiration with a broader audience.
Bestcafedesigns.com focuses on cafe and hospitality design, exploring spaces that go beyond aesthetics to enhance the social experience. I showcase projects that bring in natural elements, creative layouts, and innovative materials to inspire those interested in creating welcoming, unique cafe environments. It’s a space where hospitality design, culture, and branding intersect, offering insights for both designers and travelers.
Tinyhousezine.com, in contrast, celebrates small-scale living, a field that fascinates me due to the creativity it demands in making compact spaces functional yet fulfilling. I cover a range of projects, from urban micro-apartments to off-grid cabins, highlighting smart storage solutions, adaptable layouts, and sustainable practices. The goal is to inspire anyone interested in maximizing space without sacrificing comfort, showing how thoughtful design can make any space, regardless of size, a meaningful home.
Prefabprojects.com completes my trio, focusing on the evolving field of prefabricated and modular construction. Prefab offers sustainable, affordable, and efficient solutions in modern housing, making it ideal for quick, low-impact builds. Through this platform, I explore the versatility of prefab across residential, commercial, and public projects, shedding light on how this approach is reshaping construction.
Each site represents a unique design focus, whether it’s the ambiance of cafes, the ingenuity of tiny homes, or the efficiency of prefab construction, and provides a curated space for enthusiasts to explore the possibilities of design in these areas.
Andrew Chung
Founder, Prefab Projects
Discover Diverse Creative Projects on Behance
My favorite website for design inspiration is Behance. It offers a diverse range of creative projects across industries, from web design to branding, showcasing cutting-edge trends. What inspires me most is the ability to filter by categories like UX/UI or typography and see innovative approaches to familiar challenges. For instance, I’ve drawn ideas from interactive prototypes that balance aesthetics with functionality. The platform’s global reach also provides fresh perspectives, sparking unique ideas for my own projects. Behance’s curated quality and variety make it an endless well of creative energy.
Runbo Li
Co-Founder & CEO, Magic Hour
Find Brand Inspiration on Pinterest
Pinterest has been my go-to source for brand design inspiration, particularly when I’m helping clients develop their visual identity across different platforms. I love how I can create specific boards for different industries—like my “wellness brands” board that helped inspire a recent client’s Instagram aesthetic with its earthy tones and minimalist layouts. The platform’s visual discovery features often lead me down unexpected paths, helping me find unique color combinations and typography styles I wouldn’t have considered otherwise.
Macy Troyer
Owner, ItsGoAldy
Visit Esperecamino for Timeless Aesthetics
I really enjoy visiting esperecamino.co.za for design inspiration. It has a wonderful sense of place and really captures the historic charm and quaint character of the residential street.
What I find most inspiring about the website is how it uses a classic, timeless aesthetic with the half-timbered house imagery and muted color palette. The typography is elegant and readable, creating a cohesive visual identity. I also love how the website highlights the cozy cafes and local businesses, giving visitors a genuine sense of the community and atmosphere.
Overall, the attention to detail and the way the website seamlessly blends modern web design with traditional architectural elements is really compelling. It serves as a great example of how to thoughtfully represent a unique location and create an immersive online experience. I always come away feeling inspired to incorporate more of that handcrafted, authentic spirit into my own design work.
Lindani Thango
Creative Designer, Warten Weg
Draw Inspiration from Artstation
As a game developer, I constantly find myself drawn to Artstation.com because it’s a goldmine of creative inspiration from top-notch digital artists and game designers. What really gets me excited is their “trending” section, where I can see how artists use color theory and lighting in unique ways—it’s helped me improve the visual appeal of my own game interfaces tremendously.
Christian Marin
CEO, Freezenova
Gain Insights from UX Collective
I constantly find myself drawn to UX Collective on Medium for design inspiration, especially when I’m working on Shopify store optimizations. Their case studies break down complex UX problems into digestible insights, like this recent article about reducing cart abandonment that helped me rethink how we structure checkout flows. What really keeps me coming back is how they blend data with design thinking—instead of just showing pretty interfaces, they explain the psychology and metrics behind why certain designs work better than others.
Joshua Uebergang
Founder, Digital Darts
Browse Architectural Digest for Luxury Designs
I frequently browse Architectural Digest’s website (architecturaldigest.com) for luxury design inspiration that appeals to my Hilton Head clientele. What really catches my eye are their room-by-room mansion tours, which have helped me understand how high-end buyers envision their dream spaces and influenced how I stage properties in our market.
Dino DiNenna
Real Estate Broker, Hilton Head Realty Sales
Get Practical Ideas from Mobbin
Mobbin is my go-to for design inspiration. Unlike other platforms, it focuses on real apps and user flows, which makes it incredibly practical for understanding how designs work in real-world contexts. Seeing actual interfaces and how users interact with them provides actionable insights that go beyond surface-level aesthetics.
I also enjoy Dribbble for creative inspiration, but Mobbin stands out because it offers concrete examples from live products. It’s perfect for studying effective designs and adapting ideas for real-world applications.
Juan Carlos Munoz
Co-Founder, CC Creative Design
Track Trends on Awwwards
My favorite resource for design inspiration is awwwards.com. Showcasing the best projects from around the globe, it’s a hub for tracking trends, discovering fresh ideas, and appreciating visual and technical aesthetics. The site features case studies from top studios (Locomotive, Adoratorio, Activetheory) that you can explore online; however, sometimes, they require powerful hardware to be processed.
Still, you should approach these projects thoughtfully. Many of them are created specifically for competitions, aiming to impress and showcase the team’s skills without the constraints of real-world business needs. While being inspiring, they may not always apply directly to practical projects.
Margo Gutkovskaya
Product Designer, Swag42
Explore Kitchen Renovations on Houzz
One of my favorite websites for design inspiration is Houzz. The vast collection of images and ideas related to kitchen renovation is truly inspiring. I appreciate how the platform showcases a wide variety of styles, from modern to traditional, allowing me to see how different elements come together, like custom cabinets, kitchen counters, and unique kitchen cabinet hardware.
What really stands out to me is the user-driven content, where homeowners share their completed projects and experiences. This provides real-world applications of design concepts, particularly in areas like wall cabinets and pantry cabinets. The ability to filter by specific styles makes it easy to explore current kitchen trends and gather fresh ideas for our own offerings. The community aspect also fosters a sense of collaboration and creativity, which is vital in our industry.
Josh Qian
COO and Co-Founder, Best Online Cabinets
Use Dribbble and Midjourney for Inspiration
When the team and I need an extra boost of inspiration, we like to visit a few websites on the Internet.
One of our favorites is Dribbble. It boasts a vast membership of very creative designers and is constantly updated with new content. You will find everything you need from a design perspective here.
Recently, we discovered a new way to get inspiration. Not surprisingly, it’s using AI. As time passes, it seems the team is leaning towards this option more and more than Dribbble.
The solution: Midjourney. Prompt Midjourney for whatever you are looking to design and see what it comes up with. Scaling the creativity of the prompts helps massively, too.
To give you an idea, we recently prompted Midjourney for design inspiration for a home improvement company website, and it gave us a wonderfully designed template. We took the inspiration and created a Figma design based on it.
The outcome: a fully bespoke website for a client in the home improvement industry and a thrilled client. More importantly, the website converts much better than their previous design.
Ben Hughes
Director, Web Design Essex
Footer.design for web design inspiration. Any company that puts effort into the footer of their site (the most overlooked design element!) is worth taking a look at. Footer.design itself is straightforward, intuitive, and always updated with fresh inspiration.
Ruth Lever
Creative Director, Rule Design
