Web design inspiration: 50 sites to bookmark

When you’re hunting for fresh web design inspiration, the internet can feel both endless and repetitive. You’ve got the usual suspects (you know the ones) — but scroll long enough, and you’re staring at the same gradients, the same brutalist grids, the same “unexpected” hover effects that stopped being unexpected three years ago.

That’s why we’ve put together this ultimate guide to web design inspiration — 50 sites worth bookmarking, revisiting, and actually learning from. Whether you’re here because you’re redesigning your brand’s homepage, working on a client pitch, or just fuelling your obsession with slick interactions, this list will keep your tabs full and your ideas flowing.

Here’s why these sites matter, what they nail, and how they can spark ideas for your next project.

Award sites & showcases

Let’s start with the obvious but essential.

• Awwwards – The gold standard for award-winning sites. Expect cinematic storytelling, immersive interactions, and a constant reminder that you need to up your game.
• CSS Design Awards – Daily showcases from across the world, highlighting clever UI, UX, and front-end builds.
• SiteInspire – Clean, categorised, and addictive. Perfect if you want to filter by style, industry, or platform.
• One Page Love – A shrine to the beauty of simplicity. Every site here proves one page can be more powerful than fifty.
• Muzli by InVision – a firehose of inspiration across digital design.
• Godly – Curated daily picks of striking, creative websites across styles and sectors.
• See*Saw – A newer but strong gallery that highlights cutting-edge digital design with crisp categorisation.
• Landbook – Landing pages, portfolios, and product sites collected in a clean, browsable archive.
• Landingfolio – An extensive library of landing pages and email templates with conversion in mind.

Studios that set the bar

Some agencies that design the websites that end up on everyone else’s moodboards.

• KOTA – That’s us. Known for cinematic web design, bold creative, and immersive, interactive builds like UPP.

• Locomotive – Masters of motion and micro-interactions. Every site they touch feels alive.

• Dogstudio – Blends art, tech, and storytelling into sites that feel more like installations than pages.

• Hello Monday – Playful, bold, and endlessly inventive. You’ll want to dissect their sites pixel by pixel.

• Active Theory –  Creators of immersive, cinematic experiences online.

• Stink Studios – Sharp creative with a cinematic edge.

• Obys – Ukrainian studio with mind-bending typography and motion experiments.

Experimental playgrounds

These are less about polished client work and more about pushing boundaries. Expect weird, wonderful, and sometimes downright unusable sites — but that’s the point.

• Brutalist Websites – For when you want to see the internet in its raw, unfiltered form.

• Hoverstat.es – Curated experiments in typography, layouts, and interactivity.

• Design Made in Germany – A window into bold, often unconventional projects.

• The Useless Web – Absurd, pointless, and often hilarious. Inspiration doesn’t always have to be serious.

• HTTPSTER – A showcase of unusual and independent sites.

• Sitesee – A minimalist gallery of clean, modern web design

Brands doing it right

Sometimes the best web design inspiration doesn’t come from agencies. It comes from brands that decided to take risks.

• Apple – Yes, predictable. But their product pages are masterclasses in restraint, motion, and storytelling.

• Monzo – Proof that fintech doesn’t have to feel grey and corporate.

• Pitch – Turns presentation software into a visual playground.

• Glossier – A reminder that minimalist doesn’t have to mean boring.

• Patagonia – Bold visuals with a strong brand narrative.

• Nike – Always pushing the boundaries of product storytelling online.

• Airbnb – Seamless UX with strong, emotional visuals.

Platforms & resources

Bookmark these for when you want a constant drip-feed of ideas.

• Dribbble – Packed with glossy shots and playful concepts that are perfect for sparking ideas. Just keep in mind: a lot of what you see here are polished mockups, not designs built for real-world use.

• It’s Nice That – One of the most respected design publications, curating work across art, digital, and branding.

• The Brand Identity – A go-to platform for visual identity and digital brand systems, with thoughtful case studies.

• Behance – Massive, sometimes overwhelming, but still gold for case studies.

• Built for Mars – A plain-English UX glossary and resource hub with examples that demystify complex patterns.

• Pttrns – Mobile patterns for days.

• Codrops – Not just design examples, but tutorials and experiments you can actually build on.

• Mobbin – UI patterns from real apps, constantly updated.

• Collect UI – Daily inspiration hand-picked from Dribbble.

• UI Movement – Curated UI inspiration by theme.

• Designspiration – A Pinterest-like visual search engine for design.

• Niice – Moodboards and curated creative references.

Our current favourites

Here are some sites that gave the KOTA team a recent jolt of “woah, how did they even build this?”.

• Zyon Helmets – A clean, fluid site with a clever interactive 3D helmet: click to dive into materials and features. It proves depth doesn’t need complexity.

• Aether1 – Sleek, sensory, and interactive: think ripple effects, a levitating product zoom, 360° view, subtle audio, and a seamless scroll-based breakdown.

• Blueyard – Mesmerising spheres that pulsate with motion and colour (cocktail of orange, blue, pink) before introducing team members via a disco-ball aesthetic. Venture capital has never seemed this cool.

• Neverhack – At first glance, corporate and restrained… until a neon-purple box starts pulsing. A minimalist metaphor for security at work—quiet yet visually compelling.

• Dich (Webflow) – Wild, interactive, and cyberpunk fashion-forward: glowing cursor trails, retro-typewriter fonts, click sounds reminiscent of vintage gaming. Nostalgic-futuristic at its finest.

• Rocktree Capital – Finance meets Blade Runner: neon cityscapes, cinematic zoom transitions, eerie soundscapes. UX might feel labyrinthine—but the vibe is immaculate.

• Phantom.land – Portfolio browsing reimagined: an immersive sphere, floating panels showcasing work. Clicking opens a journey through a virtual gallery.

• Igloo – Snow, synths, and penguins: ice pulses gently, ambient wind and click sounds set the mood, leading you to a shimmering particle penguin. Emotional and atmospheric.

• Gentle Rain – A site that soothes: water ripples, calming scroll, mouse-driven fluidity, and floating AI lesson blocks—balanced, clever, and calm.

Why bookmark this guide?

Because web design inspiration is a moving target. What looks fresh today will feel dated in six months. By keeping a rotation of sites, studios, and showcases at your fingertips, you’ll always have a pulse on what’s next.

Whether you’re a designer, marketer, or brand owner, use this list as your starting point. And then go make something worth bookmarking yourself.

👉 Want more? Our web design blog is where we share the sites, strategies, and creative experiments that keep our clients (and us) ahead of the curve.