Setting up a Squarespace website is easy, but making it stand out so it doesn’t look like every other site made with Squarespace, requires customization.

Drawing inspiration from other businesses using Squarespace can help you make yours better. Look at how others have customized the templates, what elements they've added or removed, and what looks good.

Just don't copy any site designs wholesale. Taking inspiration is fine, but copying is unethical. With so many good Squarespace designs, you'll likely end up with something unique by combining different elements.

The sites listed below are categorized, but there's overlap between categories, showing the templates' flexibility. Let's dive into the inspiration!

Portfolio Website Examples

1. Architecture in Formation

This site is the portfolio page for NYC-based architect and design firm AiF. It focuses heavily on both internal and external graphic images for the buildings and rooms they've designed. Note how graphic design is put forward at every opportunity.

2. Darren Booth

Darren Booth is a Canadian artist specializing in illustration and lettering. Every page is a tiled display of individual works, with some animation to draw the eye.

3. Mike Perry Studio

Another artist and graphic designer, this portfolio site uses bright colors, animations, and front-and-center graphics to immerse you immediately and keep your attention.

4. Studio Bramble

This studio is more corporate-focused, and as such, their design portfolio is more subdued, showcasing their professional designs. It just shows that not all portfolio sites need to be in-your-face with bright colors and images.

5. Alana Dimou

Photographers love Squarespace, and with good reason, it's straightforward to get a portfolio site set up and running on the platform. This website is one example of a great photo portfolio site, with examples leading to category pages with whole sets of photographs in them.

6. Candy Black

This is a branding and design agency showcasing design-first projects for various talented individuals worldwide. A lot of exciting clients here, and stunning designs for each of them, all showcased through one excellent portfolio site.

7. Fukt Magazine

This contemporary art and design magazine uses its portfolio site to showcase its magazine issues and entice people to subscribe. All in all, it's a great depiction of a simple portfolio.

Click here to check out Squarespace Portfolio Templates

Ecommerce Website Examples

8. Supernatural Kitchen

You're never limited in how much you want to make your site bold, to make a statement. This online store does just that with vibrant colors, and clear branding from the word go. Want to attract attention? This design style is an excellent way to do it.

9. Ocelot

Chocolate is a widely varied industry with thousands of artisan chocolatiers trying to make a name for themselves. This website helps promote the owner with enticing pictures of their product with clever graphic design and plenty of photos.

10. Little Fat Boy

This food-focused store website sells cookbooks, using great graphics to sell the individual recipes they provide for free. It's a classic business model, supported by a great design that puts the food first.

11. Amina Muaddi

Evocative and unique photography takes center stage for this fashion brand, showcasing items as simple as shoes and purses uniquely and impressively. It just goes to show that a clever design can make simple products and smaller stores pop.

12. Not Work Related

The storefront for a local potter in Brooklyn is another unique site using graphics to promote items. It also uses a custom script to change your cursor on the desktop site, so check that out.

13. JBD

Just Black Denim is a denim store focusing on women's fashion, trying to bring the style, well, back in style. Again, they use large images of a particular type to promote their aesthetic, attracting a specific customer.

14. Memor

A hybrid between a portfolio website and a storefront, this brand is a part art studio, part store, and the website reflects this dual-purpose design.

Blog Examples

15. Hunter & Folk

A blog, journal, design studio, and artist, this site has it all. You can see all the eclectic interests and designs reflected in the website, making it a great inspiration source.

16. The Good Trade

This website is about fashion, beauty, culture, and self-improvement, designed to promote content. They have issues with topic cohesion, but not in site layout or design, that's for sure.

17. Riposte Magazine

Another digital magazine, this site showcases a more subdued design with more text and less prominent images, reflecting a more classical idea of what a magazine looks like.

18. Sunday Suppers

A food blog and photographer with an over-the-top level of pretentious self-importance, showcases how many different interests can converge into one cohesive site design.

19. Ash Owens

The personal blog and portfolio for a digital author, photographer, and designer. This design is a more traditional website that shows you that even simple things can be done with elegance and focus using Squarespace's templates and customizations.

20. One Mag

The website for the magazine One, focusing on sustainable production. It's another site that focuses on graphic design to sell their magazine, and it does an excellent job of showcasing their aesthetic front and center.

21. Taylr Anne

A lifestyle blogger from southern California, this blog covers various related interests with a clever design that keeps you scrolling to find more tidbits and exciting passages.

Restaurant Examples

22. Blue Dog NYC 

Restaurant websites need to showcase three things: the style of the restaurant, the menu, and how to get there (hours, location, etc.). You can see from this design that you get all of that at a glance, with specific details only a single click away. I particularly like that when you scroll down, the entire site shutters up and shows you the main menu again.

23. Rare Bird Rooftop 

A restaurant with two locations, you can click on your closest venue and see all of the vital restaurant information near at hand. If you're in their target audience, this website will capture your interest immediately.

24. Co'm Vietnamese 

Restaurant information? Check. Menu link? Check. Option to order online? Check.  Bright and vibrant images of the food they make? Check. This restaurant site has everything and shows you that even a simple design can serve its purpose admirably.

25. Leisir Wine

New York City is packed with nontraditional restaurants, so why would their websites be different? As a wine shop and bar, this site showcases the aesthetics of wine as much as the products they sell.

26. Dram & Grain 

Compare and contrast this with the previous site. Both are bars, both offer a similar intent in dining, but they have incredibly different aesthetics, sensibilities, and designs. Yet you can see how the same core focus exists, with creative photography, information laced throughout the site, and enticing offers on display.

27. Jones BBQ 

Sometimes, a restaurant goes too far in the pretentious direction. Jones takes it back down to earth with a simple, forward design. They tell you who they are, the products for sale, and they tell you how to buy them, all within a few swipes of scrolling.

28. Fire and Flour Bread

You might never think that a restaurant specializing in bread would succeed. Still, as it turns out, there's near-infinite variation in recipes, and bread culture is an incredible experience. This site showcases how diverse and wonderful bread can be, interspersed with information about their products, services, and how to order.

Local Business Websites

29. Bembien

When you're building a storefront for your business, you want to showcase your products in the best light possible. There's a lot of overlap between local businesses, storefronts, and portfolios. You'll see elements of these in this site and the others in this section of the post.

30. Fighting Eel

Anything can be a brand name these days, so long as you put effort into making it yours. This fashion brand showcases categories of products in a somewhat subdued homepage. Still, it offers everything you need to have a successful store, including important pages like store locations and the all-important shopping cart.

31. Kismet L.A.

Kismet is a local restaurant, and its website combines the best elements of local business and restaurant site designs. Notice how they have every significant page linked front and center, and you can scroll to see more specifics at your leisure. It's also well-formatted for a mobile experience, so much so that even desktops feel like mobile devices using it.

32. A+I

This local business works as a design firm, so their website is part promotion, part portfolio, and part blog. You can see all of those essential elements on display, with sliders and great use of white space to bring focus to specific information.

33. Altrock Surfaces 

Pop quiz: how interesting do you think countertops are? This site will disabuse you of the notion that there's nothing to them. It's simple on the surface, just some exciting composite and marble countertops. When you dig in more, as the site design encourages you to do, you learn more about the artistry behind them. It's a good design that draws you in.

34. Black Girl in Om

While not quite a local business, this brand covers everything from blog and podcast content to an exclusive networking club for black women and women of color. Check out their About section to see some impressive uses of locked and unlocked elements while scrolling.

35. Lunch Group

This site is another example of how subtle animation elements can bring life to an otherwise simple design. Check out the textured background near the bottom and the tiny animation of the logo that draws your attention to the top menu navigation.

36. Photo Haus

Photo Haus uses Squarespace for their studio rental business. They use this along with Peerspace to get online bookings. The benefit of Squarespace is the ability to fully customize everything and even offer membership packages with the Scheduling tool.

Musician WEbsite Examples

37. David Bowie

Bowie’s website is on a classic Squarespace template featuring everything Bowie fans need to connect with the artist.

38. Alanis MorissetTE

Alanis Morisette’s website features everything a musician should have including news, upcoming tour dates, of course music, podcasts and merch, all with Squarespace

Looking for more?

Try our template directory here.

Have you found something inspiring in this post? Great! 

I tried to give a broad range of different designs to tickle the fancy of as many other people as possible.

If I've convinced you to try out Squarespace when you haven't before, why not give Squarespace a try? It'll give you quick and easy access to Squarespace and help me out a bit along the way. And, if you want to start someplace other than the default Squarespace templates, why not check out my list of custom template shops? They're premium templates that have custom designs and far fewer people online already using them, so it's easier to make a unique-looking site out of them.

What did you think of these designs? Which is your favorite? Do you have any questions for me? If you’re struggling to build your new Squarespace site, or if you want to bounce some ideas off me, please share with me in the comments. I’d love to hear from you and the new website you’re building.