Free SVG Background Patterns For Designers By Hero Patterns

By Jake Rocheleau. in Graphics. Updated on April 6, 2023.

All modern web browsers support SVG and it’s the most flexible image format you can use. But designing custom SVGs from scratch is no easy task.

That’s why a tool like Hero Patterns can be so valuable to designers. It’s a free library of repeatable SVG patterns that you can customize with different styles, colors, and opacities.

Hero Patterns has well over 40+ different patterns to pick from and they’re all listed right on the homepage. As you scroll down, you’ll see live demos for each one and you can click any of them to see how they look.

At the top of the page, you’ll find a fixed bar with settings to change the foreground and background colors. The background color applies to the flat surface and the foreground color applies to the patterns in the SVGs.

Thanks to the natural blending style, it’s tough to come up with a bad color combo (although certainly still possible). Patterns range from checkers to detailed repeating icons like anchors.

When you find a pattern you like just click that block for a modal window with more details. From here, you can adjust the foreground/background colors, along with foreground opacity for icons.

But the real magic happens in the code snippet box where you can copy the CSS to embed the SVG purely through code. In CSS there’s a base64() method to convert string data to SVG data. This is fairly common and it works with other images like PNGs, too.

So if you don’t want the SVG file stored locally you can simply copy/paste the CSS code right into your stylesheet. This will embed the repeating background with proper colors right into your site. How cool!

Or, if you’d rather edit the SVG yourself you can download a copy of the unedited SVG image. This way you can do all edits manually in design software like Illustrator.

Hero Patterns is one of the few tools that let designers take full control over SVGs right from the browser. Repeating backgrounds used to rely solely on PNGs but web standards have advanced far enough that SVGs can take their place.

To get started, just visit the Hero Patterns homepage and browse through their pattern library. New patterns get added frequently, so be sure to check back every so often.