Digital web design is responsible for closely 95% of a visitor’s first impression of your business, and great design can help you improve sales numbers.
That’s why it’s more important than ever to incorporate digital web design into your marketing strategy. But what digital web design trends are on the horizon for 2025, and how can you use them to freshen up your site?
Keep reading for 10 digital web design trends you can steal for inspiration this year! Need more digital web design and digital marketing inspiration?
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1. Custom illustrations
Illustrations breathe life into your brand and website. When it comes to illustrations, digital web design for 2025 pulls inspiration from print publishing and other traditional art formats.
Gone are the days of cookie-cutter stock images, with websites incorporating custom illustrations into their digital web design in 2025.
Custom illustrations not only make your brand unique, but they also add a level of brand awareness when your custom illustrations speak to your brand’s style.
Example: Take a look at the art of renowned illustrator Alice Lee, for example. She’s designed custom illustrations for popular brands like Macy’s and The Washington Post.
The header of her website shifts with your cursor as you move your mouse across her homepage.
Her art has helped spark a growing trend of custom illustrations for brands that look like they came straight out of a storybook.
And with increased coding capabilities, illustrations continue to evolve beyond 2D design. Even now, digital designs pull in 3D illusions that add another layer of depth to the Internet. For example:
- Slow transition from one color to another with gradient shading
- Digital cut-out style that mimics designs cut from layers of paper
- 3D cursor interactions that can’t help users engage with your site
2. Full-page headers
Full-page headers are set to dominate digital web design trends in 2025.
Digital web designers often incorporate header variations, with a popular approach placing key text or call-to-action (CTA) buttons on the left side of the header, complemented by eye-catching images on the right. This layout leverages the natural tendency of readers to focus their attention on the top-left corner of the page.
Example: Discord’s website providing a voice and text chat app for gamers is a good example.
Discord features a fun and quirky image on the right side of their header while showcasing the benefits of their paid service on the left.
Their CTA buttons are prominently displayed, guiding viewers on how to access the added experiences. As you scroll down, Discord organizes site elements into card layouts, creating a sleek, user-friendly design that makes information easy to find and read, all while maintaining a fun and engaging vibe.
You can see how websites like this one generate a feeling of playful sophistication.
3. Paralax scrolling
Parallax scrolling is another digital web design trend gaining momentum for 2025. One variation of parallax scrolling gradually reveals more of the site as you scroll, creating a storytelling effect that enhances user engagement.
Example: Take a quick peek at this Goonies’ story site to see how paralax scrolling makes the content fun and interactive.
Background video can also incorporate into dynamic scrolling, where the video only plays when users scroll. You can also use this technique to trigger animations and make your images appear like magic.
4. White space
digital website design is heading back to minimalism with the trend of purposeful white space, much like in print magazines.
Much like natural currents, white space guides visitors through your site, seamlessly connecting elements while establishing a visual hierarchy where no single component overwhelms the design. This “breathing room” allows viewers’ eyes to rest, enhancing the overall user experience.
It also aids comprehension by defining relationships between page elements. When two elements are close together with little white space in between, human eyes will view them as one unit.
On the other hand, if two elements are further apart, your eyes will view them separately.
White space allows visitors to identify your site’s hierarchy.
And they use white space to find the most important information on pages, so knowing how to use white space on your website will help improve your site’s user experience (UX).
Example: Take a look at the white space in Myles Nguyen’s digital portfolio as a web and interaction designer.
See how it leads you right to all the important bits? The amount of white space he leaves his modern site design lets your eyes travel comfortably, giving you lots of places to rest. This digital web design example redefines minimalism with thoughtful use of white space.
5. Playful cursors
Digital websites often feature cursors that make viewing pages a new experience.
Implementing playful cursors on your site in 2025 can be as simple as changing the cursor shape or as complex as coding cursor-triggered animations.
Either way, your visitors will have a great time engaging with unique cursors.
Example: Paolo Fornasier has an awesome cursor set up on his online portfolio. The cursor displays different photos with a rippling animation and a piano tone when scrolling over the vertically aligned text of the navigation menu.
The playful animation of the navigation menu encourages users to spend several minutes simply hovering their cursor, creating an engaging experience. While your cursor design doesn’t need to be as intricate, incorporating a unique touch can add a memorable and dynamic element to your website.
As a bonus, this example also features another modern web design trend — sound!
6. Increased focus on UX/UI
Digital web design trends focused on humans in 2020, and this will become even more important in 2025. Your site’s UX must be smooth, uninterrupted, and engaging in 2025. This means:
- Fast page load
- Little clutter (use that white space!)
- Scannable, relevant SEO content
- Multimedia
Web designers wrap functionality with creativity to create a great UX, leaning into clean design while still being creative and unique in all the right ways.
The top web designers throw a bit of untidiness into the white, sterile world of technology. Hand in hand with UX, your site’s user interface (UI) must be intuitive in 2025. This means:
- Voice-enabled interfaces
- Image captions
- Video transcriptions
- No distracting elements
- Balanced motion design
Level up your site’s UX/UI by:
- Providing visitors with easy-to-read content and easy-to-use interfaces
- Hitting their aesthetic sweet tooth
It’s also important to note that mobile surfing will get bigger in 2025 vs. 2021. More than 50% of Internet traffic comes from mobile devices, and that number is expected to rise.
For a website to have a successful digital web design in 2025, all of its elements need to translate flawlessly to both desktop and mobile. Mobile responsive animation and videography will become increasingly important for web design.
Example: Take a peek at Chobani’s sleek mobile design.
Chobani delivers a sleek, fully responsive mobile design that maximizes the use of white space. Their content is highly scannable, complemented by eye-catching, mouth-watering images of their products, creating an engaging and appetizing user experience.
With an easy-to-click CTA banner across the bottom of the screen, Chobani sure knows how to pull in their mobile audiences.
Who wouldn’t want to sign up for exclusive yogurt offers?!
7. Grid design
Digital web designers will continue to play with grids in 2025 — and an asymmetric layout will likely become even more popular.
Example: Jingqi Fan’s online portfolio displays how functional an asymmetric layout can be. His site exhibits plenty of white space and a minimalist style that highlights his project images, while the asymmetric design keeps his site fresh, exciting, and engaging.
Many top modern web designers use CSS Grid Layout to bring all the capabilities of print layout to the web. Also known as Grid, CSS Grid Layout is a 2D grid layout system for Cascading Styles Sheet, a coding language that describes the layout of an HTML site page.
Grid allows digital web designers to create layouts for complex responsive web design more easily and consistently across browsers.
Not to mention, it also allows you to effortlessly create a clean, organized aesthetic.
CSS grid layout still has a way to go before it becomes compatible with all interfaces, but it continues to gain momentum as a top web design trend for 2025.
8. Image headers
A lot of digital websites designers are playing with using an image as their entire header — and it’s proven to be pretty trendy. Not only does a full-image header make a statement, but it engages users immediately.
Example: Check out how Adidas uses a bold image to draw users in. It helps that the image is Beyoncé.
The contrast in this full-images header is strinking, clean, and unique — and features two CTA buttons that guide users to the next step in their site exploration.
9. Impactful, engaging stories
Finally, digital websites in 2025 will shine at telling stories. For users to really connect with your site and your brand, it’s crucial to learn how to tell compelling stories in your content and advertising campaigns. With classy website design and a compelling story, your site is sure to delight and inform your target audience.
Example: Every Last Drop’s website is the pinacle of story-telling websites.
In an effort to raise awareness for water waste, this site tells a story that’s sure to leave a lasting impression on site visitors.
To tell the story, Every Last Drop uses paralax scrolling — another trend that we identified! This might just be the trendiest website around!
10. Color trends in 2025
Digital website design trends and digital web designer explores color pallets, and every year there’s a new popular color for the web. In 2019, it was blue, in 2020, mint, in 2021, light gray, in 2022, pastels such as pale turquoise. According to PANTONE, the color of this year is Viva Magenta 18-1750
For 2025, trend forecasting company WGSN and Coloro named A.I.
Aqua, a tech-inspired shade of blue, their color of the year for 2025. Overall, Venngage predicts that online color pallets will become more muted in 2025.
Gradients are a trend continuing from 2021 into 2025, and designers will likely continue exploring the depths to which they can take design with gradients. And because gradients cover a range of colors, they’re perfect for targeting a broad audience.
Psychology of color will also play a significant role in web design trends for 2025.
Make sure that you research the psychology behind colors before generating a new color palette for your company. It’s important that your colors match your brand. Some smaller web design trends within colors will likely continue from 2021 into 2025.
It seems that:
- Soft, cool colors (blues, teals, and greys) = Information and backgrounds
- Bold, warm colors (reds, oranges, even greens) = Calls to action (CTAs)
Example: Check out Trello’s website for project collaboration and organization software.
This website is a great example of incorporating muted color pallets and gradients into a smooth, illustrative design. They even highlight their CTA in a bright color!
Being smart about color combinations, selecting colors that work together, and staying on-brand are all crucial to benefitting from this web design trend.
