Revamp your designs with these handmade and FREE marble textures. Add the natural luxury design trend to backgrounds, package designs, vector shapes, typography, and much more.
Since natural luxury was announced as one of the big design trends of 2018, you might be looking to add a touch of this popular style to your designs. Now you can with this completely free pack of marble textures, featuring dramatic swirls of color and black and white. We created this pack of free marble textures in four convenient formats to elevate your design projects. Each background is truly one-of-a-kind and handmade, created in-house using a nail polish marbling technique.
These versatile marble textures are easy to use in any design program – each texture comes as a full color and black and white JPEG, a vector EPS, and a transparent PNG to be used in a variety of designs.
Take a look at this texture pack in action, then keep scrolling to reach your free download and learn how to use it in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Don’t have access to those programs? You can also use these free textures in Shutterstock Create – check out our tutorial for non-designers here.
What’s Included in This Free Pack of Marble Textures?
Marble textures and backgrounds mimic the ripples seen in agate and marble, creating a luxe effect for digital design. These textures will elevate all types of design, from brand identities to invitation designs. You can see how designers have incorporated these backgrounds into coffee packaging, labels, business cards, and interactive web backgrounds.
These unique, handmade marble textures incorporate swirls of solid color to create visually intriguing design backgrounds and textures. Each background is one-of-a-kind, made by mixing various nail polishes together on top of water.
This free pack contains 13 different textures, and each texture comes in four formats:
- Full-color JPEG
- Black and white JPEG
- Vector EPS
- Flat PNG
With 13 backgrounds in 4 variations, you can utilize these backgrounds in multiple ways to best suit your needs.
Download 13 Free Marble Backgrounds
Getting your free marble texture backgrounds is simple; just click on the button below to initiate the download. Want to see how these backgrounds can be used on a design? Follow along with our step-by-step instructions in both Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
By downloading this free texture pack, you agree not to resell or redistribute these assets.
How to Use Your Marble Textures in Illustrator
Once you’ve downloaded the freebie, head to the EPS folder to open the flat vector marble backgrounds. Right-click, or control-click on Mac, then select Open With > Adobe Illustrator. This command will open up a file in Illustrator with your selected vector background. Copy (Cmd + C) the marble texture over to an existing document then paste (Cmd + V), or work with the newly opened document.
The possibilities are endless when working with vector backgrounds; you can quickly change the color of the marble with the Color menu, crop to a specific shape with a clipping mask, or alter blend modes to achieve the look you’re after.
Experiment with various blend modes or adjust the opacity within the Transparency panel to achieve a unique effect. Utilize the Color and Swatches panels to experiment with color variations and import custom swatches.
Need some color inspiration? Check out these 101 color combinations and these 25 retro palettes to help jumpstart your design process.
These backgrounds can then be applied to to branding, invitations, posters, typography, shapes, and more. Add a subtle hint with monochromatic tones, or go wild with more eye-catching hues.
Add Marble Texture Clipping Masks to Type and Shapes
You can also apply these marbles textures to typography and geometric shapes using clipping masks in Illustrator.
Start by drawing a shape with the multiple Shapes Tools, or type a word with the Type Tool (T). If you’re working with typography, convert the text to editable vector paths by heading to Object > Expand. Bring the EPS marble background into Illustrator using the steps above, then adjust the colors of the marble and background.
Bring the text or shape layer in front with Shift + Command + ], then group the marble texture and background layer together with Command + G. Select both the marble background and the shape or text layer with the Selection Tool (V), then hold down Command + 7.
From the clipping mask, you can edit individual marble shapes by clicking within the mask using the Direct Selection Tool (A), or edit all marbles by clicking with the Selection Tool (V). Experiment with various opacity percentages or blend modes within the Transparency panel to achieve a unique effect.
This technique can be applied to virtually any vector shape and easily transforms your design with eye-catching or subdued textures.
Use Two Marble Textures to Design a Marble Overlay Background
The beauty of these marble textures is that you can layer them to create a one-of-a-kind background for posters, invitations, typography, and more. While using just one marble background already creates a dynamic background, incorporating two backgrounds with various blend modes gives you a truly extraordinary effect.
Marble BW Texture 07 and 08 applied with Color Burn and Overlay blend modes. Applied Distressed Texture 09 from these 50 Free Distressed Textures.
Begin by opening one of the black and white marble textures from the B&W JPEG folder. You can open it directly to Illustrator using the steps above, or you can hit Shift + Command + P to place it in an existing document. To make a color overlay, draw a rectangle with the Rectangle Tool (M), apply a light hue like a pale orange, then place it behind the marble background with Shift + Command + [.
Open up the Transparency panel and activate the marble background with the Selection Tool (V). Set the blend mode to Overlay and reduce the opacity to around 25%. To add a subtle grunge texture to the marble background, follow these steps on using our distressed textures in Illustrator.
Import another black and white marble texture to Illustrator, then layer that texture on top of the previous background with Shift + Command + ]. Set the blend mode to Color Burn, then reduce the opacity again to around 25%.
Experiment with other blend modes or background colors to see which combinations work best for you. Add a hint of this overlay with clipping masks, or go bold by incorporating this eye-catching overlay to poster or invitation backgrounds.
How to Use Your Marble Textures in Photoshop
Head to the JPEG folder in the download file and click on the B&W JPEG file to open the marble textures in black and white values. Right-click, or control-click on Mac, then select Open With > Adobe Photoshop. This command opens the selected file right into the Photoshop program, ready for edits.
Photoshop is a great program for editing and altering portions of an image. Within the software, you can change the colors of the marble itself with duotone settings, incorporate subtle transitions in color with gradients, or distort the marble texture with Photoshop filters to achieve the look you’re going for.
Create Duotone Backgrounds
In Photoshop, duotones refer to grayscale photographs that utilize multiple color inks to reproduce that image’s shadows, midtones, and highlights. This handy mode introduces one (monotone) to four (quadtones) inks to create pops of color within an image’s composition. This technique has been popular across all types of photography, specifically within portraits.
Gradient Map applied to Marble BW Texture 07.
To start your duotone journey, open a B&W JPEG marble texture into Photoshop. Convert the RGB image to grayscale by navigating to Image > Mode > B&W. Head back to that menu once again and select Duotone instead of B&W.
Within the Duotone Options dialog box, you can select from a library of presets or create your own custom inks. This menu allows you to choose from various types of duotones, from monotone to quadtone. Click on the color thumbnail to open the Color Picker and select from various hues. To adjust how the ink is applied to the image, click on the curve thumbnail and drag the curve around.
To incorporate a more drastic application of color to the marble textures, apply a gradient map to the black and white background using these detailed steps.
Add Gradients to Alter Marble Colors
Incorporating gradient overlays is a quick way to introduce a transition of color into the marble texture. Open the black and white marble background in Photoshop, then add a Gradient by selecting the circle icon found at the bottom of the Layers panel.
This command brings up the Gradient Fill dialog box. Change the default white to transparent gradient to a solid fill gradient. Then, click on the gradient to bring up the Gradient Editor menu. From here, you can customize the hues in the gradient stops. Double-click on the stops, resembling a house shape, to activate the Color Picker. Drag the circle icon around to select specific hues, then hit OK to bring you back to the Gradient Editor menu. Repeat the same steps for the other gradient stop, then hit OK once again to return to the main program.
You’ll notice a solid gradient fill on top of the marble background; this is because the layer is set at a Normal blend mode. Let the gradient shine through the marble texture by selecting Screen or Lighten from the list of blend modes.
Both the duotone and gradient techniques are extremely versatile; you can incorporate a range of colors to modify the marble textures, customizing the background to your needs.
Bonus: More free stuff to use in your next design project…
- 50 Free Distressed Textures for Designers
- Master List of Keyboard Shortcuts for Designers + FREE Cheat Sheet
- Get These 20 Free Script Fonts to Make Elegant Designs
- Free Swatch Download: 25 Retro Color Palettes
