Where can I get a traditional wallpaper background that I can use for my website?

Maybe something here could work. They are free to use.

http://istockphoto.com ?

You’ll have to wade through some serious crap, but Photobucket has a giant album full of background photos.

Here’s a post I stumbled across recently with a bunch. Unfortunately there’s not really any one good resource for these things (that I know of), I wish there was.

Good search terms for this are: seamless, wallpaper, pattern, background.

I second istockphoto.com

@johnpowell I’ve been using one of Travis’ backgrounds for my Twitter for a while. I love his stuff.

Let me know as exact as you can what you want and I’ll try to pull it together for you. I’m a photo hound out here on the prairie and lived in the mountains for a good spell so I have lots of unique photos that I would be more than willing to share. Plus, I’m a fair hand at Photoshop.

The wallpaper pattern is copyrighted. Never ever assume anything is not copyrighted unless you have written proof saying this.

I have made many bgs similar to these. It’s very easy to generate, hence why you are likely having a problem finding a variety of it for free.

There is a site which I can’t remember now, which is a gallery of user submitted tiling backgrounds, and it has a tool to build and submit your own using a library of preset shapes etc. It is a good place to start from. I’m sorry I can’t find the link now, maybe someone else remembers it.

I finally saw the background for this page…. just catch a glimpse at the top.

It would be an easy task to generate your own design into a repeating pattern for wallpaper. Modifying an existing design would also be easy to do to get away from copyright issues.

thanks everyone for the links and help.

To give you a closer idea, this website is where I got the inspiration from. I want a similar colour and similar style, something that’s subtle but detailed.

@johnpowell I seem to remember this website from ages ago. there’s one pattern there that I might play around with that could work.

@irondavy found a really good dA pattern in the post that you linked to.

I’ll play around with what I’ve got and see what works best, thanks everyone! I’ll post a link to the website once it’s finished.