How to find free (and beautiful) interior design pictures for your blog!

Hello design lovers!

This post is a follow up from my previous one, where I talked about images copyright and what no-one tells you about blogging and pinning. Long story short, I thought that using Pinterest pics on my website was okay under Fair Use standards (= giving credit to the pin). Then I discovered that it's not, it's rather illegal, and you can get sued for doing it. I talk about it in this post.

Now, every interior designer knows that Pinterest is an essential resource to find inspirational images. When a concept board has to be prepared, the interior designer goes straight away on Pinterest! It's a container of all the coolest interior pics and it's really versatile: you can search for pictures by colour, style, type, trend, material, mood... I don't know how they do it but any keyword I put in, I find the right pictures for it.

So, where do we find cool free pictures for our interior design blogs? Here are three suggestions:

PINTEREST

Am I crazy? No, you can still use Pinterest, but you need to track back the picture until the very original source. Sometimes you won't find it at first and you may have to put the pic into Google images and source it from there. Usually, you'll find that the owner is a photographer or a blogger. Write to them, tell them you appreciate their work, and ask for permission to use all their photos (you could find many more that you like!), offering to credit and link back to their website. In my experience, 80% of them will reply soon and will be happy to help!

What about the other 20%? Forget about them and look for new pictures.

PEXELS and UNSPLASH

They are both very good websites with free images. Not all of them are really cool but you'll definitely find some! For interiors, there are a bit more options than Pixabay and Flickr (which you can still check, just in case). Bear in mind that all these websites exist because some generous photographers gifted their pictures; so you may want to credit them as a thank you (just write "courtesy of...").

PRESSLOFT

It's a really good source if you are interested in press releases (which I'm sure you are if you are blogging). Obviously, all interior pics show settings to display the products, not real interiors. But some of them are very well done, so it's worth having a look!

What are your favourite sources? Tell me about it!