14 Stunning (and free) Watercolor Paper Textures

Float away on these flowing textures

This list of 14 watercolors and textures will give you everything you need to create the perfect light, airy undertones for your design. There are 10 lovely watercolor stains and 4 cratery paper textures for you to play with. Great for backgrounds, or even creating a splash right up front.

Watercolor stain and paper textures 

Watercolors flow, bleed, and stain in unique and lovely ways. Using them as textures or backgrounds can bring out the light-hearted, arty side of any design. We've listed here for you 10 beautiful and non traditional watercolor stain backgrounds to play with, plus four knobbly watercolor paper textures to pair with them. Happy watercoloring! 

Watercolor — 12 Seamless Textures

These high resolution watercolor wash textures are 100% seamless, which makes them ideal for use as backgrounds. You could use them as repeating web backgrounds or apply them as pattern overlays on vector shapes in Photoshop.

12 Watercolor Stained Paper Textures 

All are extra hi-res at ~3000x4200, perfect for backgrounds. The special process to make these real-life textures involves soaking beautiful vintage paper in water, then adding regular paints, watercolors, and food coloring. Set, dry, repeat. Inspiration from Caleb Kimbrough and textures from http://valleysinthevinyl.com.

Watercolor galaxy textures by Takmaj

Seven beautiful galaxy-themed watercolors join sky and surface. If you're going to work with these starry textures, pop open the music video the artist listened to while creating them. The package contains 7 jpg files 2000x3000px; looking at them full screen is like staring at the milky way in a lake. 

Lost and Taken watercolor stains

Dozens and dozens of unique, inventive watercolor stains on simple printer paper; most are free for download. The layout and search UI here makes for a very nice browsing experience. Bookmark the source at https://lostandtaken.com/ for all your background texture searches, from paper to fabric to tree bark.

Grunge watercolors

A free download pack to give you the perfect balance between light, carefree watercolor and heavy metal grunge. Free for commercial use, or with a premium membership with no attribution.

Watercolor textures by cgarofani

This laid back artist enjoys creating these swipes of color so much that she churns them out just for fun. Link back to her for some good karma when you use these stains.

Watercolor frame background

From Freepik, this pack of framing water color stains are perfect for background Free for commercial use, or with a premium membership no attribution required.

Watercolor textures from Eyes of Style

Five 300 DPI jpeg watercolor textures in lovely hues, all free for personal or commercial use. The artist recently fulfilled a lifelong dream of moving to Belize, and you can see the tropical texture in her watercolor work. Check out more of her lovely, simple designs at www.eyesofstyle.com.

Set of 6 free watercolor textures

Use these splashes of color to add some pizazz to your day. This set of 6 watercolor textures come in PNG format with a transparent background. They have no paper texture so you can easily use them with any type of background, and come in an array of vibrant hues.

Watercolor stock packs by Aurora Wienhold

Tons of beautiful watercolor textures in theme packs for your to choose from. The artist uses heavy duty "Britannia" from "Hahnemühle" paper types, with 300g/m² thickness. To get the true vibrancy to come through in her digital versions, she'll bump color saturations and use the "Multiply" tool to give the upper layers lower transparency, giving these textures a glowing, multilayered variance. 

Free vector / psd watercolor paper textures

Once you've got your watercolor stains, here are some understated paper textures to overlay. Bring out the full effect with these 4 pulpy, grubby paper vector or hi-res graphics. 

Medialoot Watercolor paper textures

Created from various cold press watercolor papers. Free for members.

Free Vector Watercolor Paper Texture

Large grain, cratery texture.

Grubby surface watercolor paper texture

Grubbier, medium grain with classic visible chain lines.

Watercolor paper texture by freepik

Yellower, with smaller grain.

And that's it for the beautiful watercolor textures! If you've got any recommendations or questions feel free to mention in the comments — we'd love to hear from you!