After making the changes to my domain’s new layout, as profiled in last week’s webdesign post, I found myself still dissatisfied with how plain the layout appeared. It just was…BLAH.

As per my usual habit, I found myself surfing aimlessly around the Internet, trying to pinpoint what it was about my favorite site designs that gave them the “oomph” I was looking for. I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it…and then, I sighted a subtle tiled background effect on one site, and realized that perhaps all I needed was something to give the background a little interest.

Enter PatternCooler.com, a website that should definitely be on your favorites/bookmarks as a design resource!

In the Pattern Editor, you can start off by browsing tons of different background patterns, from bold to subtle and everything in-between.

Sort through the background images using the tag menu, available from the top left drop-down arrow…

…and once you find a tag you like, you can browse through the shortened list much more quickly. But this isn’t where the magic stops!

Once you select a pattern you like, you can actually change the colors in the image with either the onboard color picker OR a custom HTML hexcode (like what Photoshop outputs).

For this example, I picked the colors from my domain’s upcoming Version 14 layout, and started playing around. It looks so cool already!

You can play with the Transparency slider at the bottom left of the editor to make one or both colors more or less prominent. There are also Texture filters to customize the image even further (bottom right toolbar), as well as options to resize the image. When you’re done, simply click Download!

And here’s a sample of what that very background image looks like in use on my upcoming layout! I like how the subtle color variation gives a LITTLE interest to the background without overwhelming the eye.

Be sure to check out PatternCooler.com‘s new Background Tile Editor for your layout needs; this has been by far the easiest and best experience I’ve had with creating a background tile. (And they ain’t paying me to say this, either–I just had the good fortune to stumble on this site and realize what a gem I’d found!)