18 Beautiful Examples of Floral Illustrations in Web Design
Imagery can often define how someone perceives your website, and even your entire brand. The visuals you use have the power to ensure a memorable browsing experience for your visitors. Besides your site’s color palette and the typographic choices you make, imagery stands as one of the most effective ways to distinguish yourself. And when it comes to imagery, illustrations have a particular strength. With them, you can express anything, be it a particular message, a feeling, a concept, or a story.
In this article, we’ll focus on floral illustrations and their use in web design. Just like flowers themselves, floral illustrations, too, carry a symbolic meaning which is transferred to the elements they’re used on, be it posters, packaging, websites, or even clothes. From elegant to exotic, floral illustrations color our works with entrancing and innovative vibes.
We’ll take a glimpse into the picturesque worlds of several prolific illustrators. Their styles vary, depending on each artist’s distinctive way of creating and using floral illustrations. However, five styles prevail and are the most popular – inked, saturated, watercolor, flat, and woodcut. We’ll discuss each style separately and back the talk up with 18 beautiful examples of floral illustrations in web design as seen on these websites:
We’ll also introduce you to these 11 impressive artists, whose illustrations are truly inspiring and definitely worth checking out:
Inked Floral Illustrations
Inked floral illustrations appear very delicate, and this quality becomes even more pronounced when subtle colors are added to the mix. For example, pink and gold are an appealing, unobtrusive pairing that looks great on florals. Especially the combination of a golden flower placed on a pink background.
This type of floral illustrations is currently the big thing in design and is predominantly used when trying to achieve a feminine look. This is particularly obvious in jewelry design, but also in cosmetics branding and fashion design, where stronger, mostly skin and earthy color pallets take center stage.
When trying to achieve an even more sophisticated look in their inked floral illustrations, authors often experiment with strokes in various widths. They may even deliberately over-process their works, but the end result will always appear very simple-looking.
The best thing about these types of illustrations is that they confirm the adage that often less is more – to leave a strong, lasting impression on the observer you often just need one beautifully executed floral illustration and not much else.
Below are some of the most beautiful examples of inked floral illustrations in action.
Kim Vance is a naturopathic doctor and her website is a wonderful reflection of her female-focused medical practice. Neutral colors dominate the pages while the simple, inconspicuous inked floral illustration placed at the upper left corner of the screen beautifully matches the delicate vibe of the website.
Amarie Lael Design is a branding and web design studio that’s incorporated two delicately illustrated tulips into their logo. As you browse through their website, you’ll stumble upon some more floral illustrations, e.g. on their about page. These inked elements are very subtle but powerful enough to make the studio’s online presentation look refined and sophisticated.
Viola Hill is another web and branding studio whose website is imbued with inked floral illustrations throughout. They’re all about creating brands that feel natural, and the choice of refined florals on their website and in their work supports this ideology.
Behind Ginko stands Karine Goxes, a landscape designer, and her website perfectly complements her profession. It’s painted with nature-inspired hues and adorned with vivid imagery, but it’s the inked floral illustrations that give it a distinct and interesting appeal.
148 is a digital agency from Paris. While the rest of their website is quite colorful and bright, the first slide you see is in black and white tones. However, it doesn’t look monotone at all. In fact, it’s quite arresting thanks to the rich, inked botany illustrations that adorn its sides.
Maztri is a team of architects and interior designers with an appealing website that beautifully depicts what they excel at. Realistically-shaded, interestingly-animated floral illustrations are the first thing you see as their homepage loads. The botany elements continue to pop up here and there as you continue to scroll, making the browsing experience all the more fun.
As these examples demonstrate, inked illustrations are very practical and handy. You can use them in various contexts and in all kinds of ways, e.g. as backgrounds, logos, icons, or patterns. One thing’s for certain – whether you use them on bright or dark backgrounds, as a main or complementing element, they undoubtedly enrich your designs. And if you decide to adorn them with a pop of color, you’ll make them even more appealing.
Saturated Floral Illustrations
Illustrations of large, richly-colored flowers are very popular in packaging design, and they also often ornate backgrounds on websites and book covers. They’re mostly used in combination with dark backgrounds, which gives them a luxurious and opulent appeal. When you feel like creating a highly impressive piece of work, you won’t go wrong by opting for this kind of illustration. They can also be found in typography design – fonts are often adorned with floral illustrations resulting in utterly elegant letters. On websites, they look vibrant and make pages look like a newly-blossomed garden, as seen in the following examples:
The moment Mooi’s website loads, you’re transported into a picturesque world of saturated floral illustrations that are splashed all over the screen. Brightly colored and interestingly animated, this sort of illustrated content undoubtedly captures the visitors’ attention from the get-go and invites them to further explore all this brand has to offer.
Dolce by Tintolino’s website is bursting with life thanks to the vividly-colored, saturated floral illustrations. They make the homepage look very lavish and alluring, which perfectly matches the brand’s overall style.
Sean Joseph Klassen is a designer and a musician whose creativity becomes apparent the minute you land on his website. Ethereal, delicately-colored floral illustrations placed at the center of the page give us our first glimpse into Sean’s work. And after such a strong start, we can’t help wanting to learn more about his projects.
Our design team is well aware of the power of saturated floral illustrations on our themes. This can be seen on the Gretna Green theme, for example. Its powdery-colored floral elements are perfect for any wedding website.
Saturated floral illustrations also look amazing as banners on websites. They’re often seen on wedding websites and invitations, usually in bright or pastel colors. A lot of spa centers and yoga studios also use flowers as a main decorative element on their pages, since the predominantly female audience frequents them. Flowers make their sites look gentle and feminine, while also carrying various symbolic meanings that often support the principles of such places.
Watercolor Floral Illustrations
Watercolor floral illustrations are mainly used on wedding websites and invitations. No matter their color, they always look very delicate and subtle. If you add a good font combination into the mix, you’ll get an elegant pairing that you simply can’t go wrong with, whether you decide to use it as a decorative detail or set it as the main element.
An excellent example of watercolor floral illustrations in action is our theme The Aisle.
The Aisle is an elegant theme specifically crafted for wedding websites. Our design team has decorated it with multiple watercolor floral illustrations, which look airy and refined, and as such, fit the theme’s sophisticated style like a charm.
This type of illustration can be used in various contexts. They look particularly interesting as logos, in stronger colors, or as backgrounds, in translucent hues. If you carefully craft an illustration that matches your style and the message you wish to convey, your brand can become easily recognizable precisely because of that graphic element.
Flat Floral Illustrations
Flat floral illustrations are essentially very minimalistic. Because of that, they work great on various types of websites, especially on sites dedicated to digital technologies.
They look particularly striking on websites where people don’t actually expect to see them, making such sites look refreshing and richly adorned. In general, flat floral illustrations are sure to give any page a youthful summer vibe, especially in combination with warm summer colors. They usually come in a vector format, so their color, shape, and style can be easily customized to the user’s liking.
There are numerous examples on the web that illustrate the charm of flat floral illustrations. We’ve singled out several of our favorite examples:
Snapsound is a sound studio with an online presentation where multi-colored illustrations dominate the page. However, they’re quite simple so they definitely don’t overpower the remaining content. Instead, they make it all seem very sweet and eye-pleasing.
Culturally Connected has a floral-illustration-rich website that’s quite fun to browse because most of the illustrated content is animated. The flora starts to move as you scroll or hover over it, making the floral elements more prominent.
Amazônia Font is a typeface whose design was inspired by Amazonian wildlife. And the website where the font is showcased fully matches that exotic style. It’s keyboard-controlled, which makes it all the more amusing to explore. There’s lots of colorful and wild illustrations in darker hues resembling the Amazon’s rich flora that complement both the illustrated wildlife and the typeface, still allowing the font to shine the brightest.
As you wait for the Pratham Books’ website to load, a delicately-colored and animated lotus flower appears on the screen to keep you company. This company publishes books for children, so it’s not surprising in the slightest their site is all about illustrations. Everywhere you look there are wonderful depictions of animals, animated insects, etc. and of course, colorful flat floral illustrations that contribute to creating the website’s magical appeal.
Koox is all about creating delicious food and serving the best coffee, and their website is filled with lovely illustrations that fit their business idea. Bell peppers, apples, tomatoes, and orange slices are scattered all over the page and are in a wonderful artistic symbiosis with the accompanying illustrated botany that comes in various shades of green.
Because of their simplicity, flat floral illustrations are normally used in combination with other types of illustrations. But even then, they appear very clean. To make them look more pronounced and richer, you can play with different textures and shadows.
Woodcut Floral Illustrations
Woodcut floral illustrations are all about making florals look as if they were indeed woodcut, i.e. engraved on wooden panels. People mostly use this kind of illustration when they want to create a traditional look that instills trust. This is especially true for newly established brands that are yet to prove themselves on the market. They’re also a good choice if you’re going for a retro or rustic style for your designs.
To see how terrific woodcut floral illustrations can be, take a look at two of our themes:
Dolcino is our pastry and cake shop theme whose elegant design has been enriched with various woodcut illustrations that give it a traditional and sophisticated vibe.
Corretto is a theme crafted for coffee shops and cafés done in a vintage fashion, so it’s no wonder our team decided to imbue it with some lovely woodcut illustrations that give it a timeless appeal.
11 Artists to Follow for Inspiration
The world of floral illustrations is huge and the following list of artists is by no means definitive. However, each of these illustrators brings something unique to the table and creates botanical art that is undoubtedly interesting, versatile, and inspiring.
Ryn Frank is a master of hand-drawn illustrations. Her work is authentic and recognizable. She combines thin lines and different textures, and usually uses no colors, but instead places her illustrations on grey-ish backgrounds.
Irene Demetri is a graphic designer from Greece whose works look very delicate and subtle. Her inked illustrations appear very feminine and so do the color palettes she uses. She often places her illustrations on posters, various kinds of products, agendas, notebooks, tote bags, cases, and uses them as patterns, too, so her Behance profile is a great place to visit when you wish to get inspired.
Clare Owen is a freelance illustrator and her work is truly astounding. Her illustrations mostly fit the flat style, but she takes them to a whole new level and enriches them with shadows, noise, or hatching. No matter the object she places her works on, they always look like true artistic masterpieces.
Susan Driscoll’s choice are flat illustrations. She uses lots of colors and is very attentive to details, but she’s also no stranger to making simple or even abstract works. If you go through her Instagram profile, you’ll see the stages she went through as an artist until she found her own artistic voice.
Anna Aniskina’s world of art is bursting with colors. Her illustrations can be described as flat, but because of the way she’s using colors, some of her works look like letterpress, while others seem very vintage and rich.
Nancy Wolff is another artist whose illustrations are predominantly flat, but she usually adorns them with all kinds of textures and experiments with various color patterns. You’ll enjoy browsing her website and getting to know both the artist and her captivating artistry.
Alyanna Nebreja’s Instagram page introduces us to her magical and versatile world of illustrations. She excels at several styles – flat, saturated, and inked. What all of her works have in common (regardless of the style they belong to) is an alluring vintage vibe and a selection of strong colors.
Charlotte Day is trained in horticulture and her love for and knowledge of botany shines through her magnificent, elegant, and saturated illustrations.
Maggie Enterrios’s illustrations are saturated, well-detailed, and fairy-tale-like. She usually opts for harmonious color combinations in her work, but Maggie also is no stranger to creating monochrome illustrations, which are equally beautiful.
Maciek Polak is an illustrator and graphic designer who says that his style has been heavily influenced by his love for skateboarding and graffiti. His illustrations are saturated, but they also slightly look as if woodcut. Maciek combines traditional techniques and art directions with modern tools which results in some pretty astonishing works of art.
Evie Shaffer is not an illustrator, but an award-winning photographer on Unsplash. We’ve included her on our list because her photographs of flowers are simply remarkable. At times, they even look almost as if illustrated. One thing’s for sure – her gorgeous images would look incredible in any kind of project.
Final Words
We hope these examples of floral illustrations in web design inspire you to create some astounding illustrations by yourself. Try out all the different styles and don’t be afraid to experiment with colors, textures, techniques, etc. And even if you’re not interested in creating floral illustrations on your own, you can still use them to adorn your site in a distinct manner. Our breakdown of the most popular types of botanical illustrations and how they’re used should help you understand there are no limits as to how creative you can be and will hopefully encourage you to incorporate florals in your works.
