55 Niche Web Design Galleries for Your Inspiration

Designers are always looking somewhere for inspiration, and there are plenty of design galleries online that have been created for this purpose. Personally, many of my favorite galleries are niche-specific, which makes them stand out from the hundreds of other galleries and unique in some way.

Over a year ago Muhashar Iqbal published a list of niche galleries on the Most Inspired blog. I decided to put this list together because a number of great additions have been launched since that post was published.

In this post I’ve tried to focus on the niche galleries that are currently active (or at least point out those that are not being updated) so that they can be useful resources to you if the topic is of interest.

E-Commerce Galleries:

CartFrenzy
Our own gallery that showcases the best e-commerce designs.

Cart Craze
Cart Craze is another e-commerce gallery that has a lot of sites in the archives.

Other E-Commerce Galleries:

• Carted Up – Not up-to-date
• E-Commerce Gallery

Portfolio Galleries:

Folio Focus
Our own gallery of well-designed portfolio sites.

Foliostars
Foliostars was launched in 2008 and has over 200 featured sites.

Pixel Perfect Portfolios
An up-to-date gallery of the best Flash portfolios.

Mobile Galleries:

Mobile Awesomeness
Mobile Awesomeness is the best place to find inspiration from exemplary mobile sites.

CSS iPhone
A gallery of mobile website designs.

One-Page Sites:

One Page Love
An up-to-date gallery of one-page websites.

Other One-Page Galleries:

• One Page Folios – the site is not available at the moment.

Layout-Based Galleries:

Design by Grid
Design by Grid is a showcase of grid-based design. There are not a lot of sites added, but it is up-to-date.

No Resolution
No Resolution is a gallery of liquid layouts. Only a few sites are added each month.

Other Layout-Based Galleries:

• The Horizontal Way – hasn’t been updated in nearly two years, but still an interesting gallery.

Minimalist Website Galleries:

Minimal Exhibit
Our own gallery of the best websites with a minimalist design approach.

Minimalsites
Minimalsites is an up-to-date gallery with a lot of minimal inspiration.

Typography Galleries:

Typesites
Typesites showcases sites with excellent typography. It is infrequently updated.

TypeInspire
Our own typography-focused gallery. TypeInspire includes websites as well as other types of design.

Blog Design Galleries:

Blog Design Heroes
Our own gallery of the best blog designs, categorized by blogging platform.

Blog Design Lab
A blog design gallery with almost 200 sites being showcased.

CMS-Related Galleries:

CMSDesigns
CMSDesigns is a gallery of sites broken down by content management system. You can browse sites that are powered by WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Movable Type, Typo3, and Typolight.

CMS Showcase
CMS Showcase is a gallery that categorizes the posts according to CMS.

CMS Webshow
CMS Webshow categorizes the featured sites into 20 different content management systems.

Buzz CMS
Buzz CMS currently includes over 1,000 featured sites categorized by CMS.

WordPress Galleries:

We Love WP
We Love WP is consistently updated. It’s an excellent source of WordPress inspiration.

WPInspiration
WPInspiration, run by the guys behind WPCandy, is another great source of WordPress Inspiration.

WPLuxe
WPLuxe is a similar gallery that focuses on WordPress-based sites.

WPForest
Another up-to-date WordPress gallery.

WP Float
A relatively new gallery that focuses on WordPress.

WPCount
Currently showcasing more than 300 sites powered by WordPress.

Other WordPress Galleries:

• WP Cube – Not up-to-date
• LoopPress – Also not up-to-date

Drupal Galleries:

DrupalSites
A large (over 3,000 sites) and current gallery of Drupal-powered sites.

DrupalSN
A Drupal social network that includes a gallery of sites built on Drupal.

Other Drupal Galleries:

• Drupal Lovers
• Drupal Museum
• Drupal Based

Joomla Galleries:

Best of Joomla!

Best of Joomla! is a community site for Joomla! users, and it includes a gallery section.

Other Joomla Galleries:

• JoomlaBased
• Best Joomla Design
• CSS Platform
• J!Case

MODx Gallery:

MODx Club
MODx Club is only a few months old and doesn’t have a huge number of posts yet, but it is up-to-date.

Django Gallery:

Django Sites
Django Sites hasn’t been updated in a few months, but there are over 2,000 sites in the archives.

Blogger Galleries:

We Love Blogger
A gallery of blogs powered by Blogger (not up-to-date)

Other Blogger Galleries:

• Blogger Showcase

Textpattern Gallery:

We Love Textpattern
An up-to-date gallery with a decent number of sites in the archives.

TYPO3 Gallery:

We Love TYPO3
Not a huge gallery, but there are currently over 100 TYPO3 sites on display.

Dot Net Nuke Gallery:

dnnGallery
dnnGallery is about a year old and has more than 50 sites in the archives.

Other Galleries:

jQuery Style
Showcasing websites with excellent use of jQuery.

Light on Dark
Light on Dark showcases dark colored websites.

CSS Nature
CSS Nature features nature-inspired and environmentally-focused websites.

eduStyle
eduStyle is an excellent gallery that focuses on higher education websites.

CSS Illustrated
Showcasing illustrated website designs.

Colorgorize
Colorgorize lets you browse through the sites in it’s gallery by color.

CSS Princess
CSS Princess showcases the work of female designers. It is infrequently updated.

HTML5 Gallery
Showcasing sites that are using HTML5.

LaunchSoon
LaunchSoon is both a product to help you create a launching soon page and a gallery that showcasing launching soon pages.

For more design inspiration, please see:

• 50 Inspirational E-Commerce Website Designs
• 25 of the Best Photographer Portfolio Sites
• 50+ Gorgeous Navigation Menus