The New Year holidays are on their way! Even though it’s only mid-November, web designers are already starting to think about how to transform an existing site—or create a brand-new one. Starting in December, the internet will be flooded with themed and visually refreshed projects. And it doesn’t really matter whether Christmas is celebrated in Russia at the end of December or early January—website design changes regardless. Because New Year’s is for everyone. Of course, in some countries it’s celebrated in February or June.
Today, we’re starting a series of posts exploring ways to revamp a site and what elements are already ready for the arrival of 2018. You might think there’s nothing specific here or it’s all too vague—but our goal is to examine the general principles, the visual choices for the main design components. There are countless variations of snowmen and Christmas icons, but using them still depends on the project’s style. If it's minimal and strict, linear icons will fit better. If the client wants something bright and festive, you’ll just need to swap them for stylized ones—either classic or with long shadows.
For example, large collections from image banks like Freepik , All Free , and Pinterest .
And now...
The Holiday Page
E-commerce websites often prepare festive updates. Many promotions are tied to these dates: Christmas deals, seasonal offers. This leads to the creation of Christmas-themed landing pages that showcase a product, discount, or special deal.
Every year, you’ll see online stores like Ozon, Boots, Utkonos, and Letuál updating their looks with themed offerings. For instance, the British store Boots is already starting to prep and upload its new festive visuals. Special offers now feature a fitting design.
Google keeps an annual watch over Santa Claus’s journey to the Christmas tree via its Santa Tracker . The radar opens on December 24, but there’s already plenty of festive content available.
Often, landing pages turn into little games—or rather, they start a countdown to the New Year. Every day, visitors receive a “gift” just by visiting the promo page. For example, 30days.ubi.com by Ubisoft offered a new gift each day from December 24 onward (wallpapers, icons, crafts, etc.). Similarly, uxmas featured daily articles—exclusive to the season.
The Polish project Polish Christmas Guide decided to share the unique traditions of Polish Christmas and New Year’s. By navigating with Santa Claus, users can learn about dishes, clothing, customs, and much more.
Allstate Holiday Decorator still invites users to decorate a virtual home and turn it into a greeting card for friends.
Not-so-simple decoration
Whether you’re updating an existing site or starting from scratch, designing a holiday look isn’t simple. You’ll need to think about a stylized logo featuring a snowman or Santa Claus. Don’t forget the Christmas tree—if not literal, then at least a glowing star-lined outline.
Backgrounds change too . These can be full scenic holiday images or snowflake textures, embroidered fabrics, etc. For example, here’s a short list of interesting backgrounds: Green Christmas Background , Rustic Vintage Christmas , Christmas-Holiday Photo , Christmas Seamless Patterns , Christmas Backgrounds . Sure, many are paid—but these are packs, not single images, and the price isn’t too steep. And if you check Creative Market , you’ll find a ton more ideas—from styled photos to fonts, icon sets, buttons, strips, and more. And any image bank has themed collections like this. Or check out this collection .
Snow. It’s especially important. If you don’t want to use stylized icons, clip art of snowmen or Santa, then just snow—individual flakes, glowing light effects, and elegant background textures for your sections—can still do the trick. Here’s how that’s already been used on landsend and llbean.
Despite a strict overall design, the holiday spirit is still there.
We’ve looked at the key features of festive web design, but it’s worth remembering that the design principle remains unified. Swap out the background , add a little snow and some star dust—gold or silver—around your frames or products, refresh your font, or sprinkle snow around your main headlines. And you’ve already started a big transformation.
Photoshop Welcomes the New Year
Even though you can find loads of New Year-themed elements online, Photoshop still comes in handy. Often there’s a lack of stylistic photography, narrative, or composition in a winter format. That’s why today we’ll show how you can use just Photoshop and basic tools to turn a regular summer photo into a snowy winter one—and with a few snowflakes, glow, and sparkle, it becomes truly festive. That’s already half the design work done!
For the example, let’s take a typical summer landscape. The idea is to remove warm tones and overlay snow and storm effects. And of course, the final image should look as realistic as possible.
Open the image, duplicate the layer, and add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer . For each color in the list, reduce saturation. The goal is to desaturate warm tones and give it a cold, wintry look. Red doesn’t always need adjustment, but Yellow and Green usually control grass and leaves. Cyan and Magenta adjust the sky. On snowy days, the sky isn’t bright blue. If you choose “Master” and desaturate entirely, the image becomes black-and-white—which we don’t want. Winter still has some color, just muted.
Next, select the working photo layer and go to Select → Color Range . You’ll now adjust overall image contrast. Tweak the fuzziness and selectively sample colors. Where white/gray spots show up, snow will appear.
Click OK and a selection appears. Without touching it, add a new blank layer between the adjustment layer and photo, then fill it with white using Ctrl+Backspace. Magic! Your image is now covered in snow. Maybe too much? Maybe not enough? You can return to the Color Range menu and fine-tune it.
Reduce this white layer’s opacity or fill as needed. During blizzards, visibility drops—so hiding mountain ranges is acceptable. Add a layer mask and use a soft brush with low opacity and opposite color to gently mask areas where heavy snowfall isn’t needed. We’ve processed the background mountains with a nice, misty effect.
Now, let’s enhance contrast. Duplicate your base photo layer, move it to the top of the stack, and set the blend mode to Soft Light . Reduce opacity to around 20% . If needed, adjust the Hue/Saturation layer again to restore a touch of color. Dry grass under snow isn’t gray—it’s beige-gray. Pine trees remain greenish, brownish-gray. So restore a bit of color, especially for distant shots where snow dominates the view.
Let’s create a unified tone. Make a new layer, fill it with soft blue (#7bbdf6), set the blend mode to Soft Light , and lower opacity. The image now looks covered in frost, mist, and chill.
Snow. Create a new layer, fill it white, go to Filter → Noise → Add Noise . Set it to 100%, Gaussian, monochromatic.
Add Gaussian Blur (1 px) and set blend mode to Screen . If there's too much snow, reduce.
Go to Image → Adjustments → Levels and move the black slider to the right to reduce white noise density until you get a gentle snowfall.
Let’s create another snow layer like before, but this time apply a third filter— Motion Blur at 60° and 10 px distance. Blend mode: Screen and fine-tune levels (Ctrl+L) to simulate snowfall. Since this snow is in the foreground, use Ctrl+T to scale it up—flakes become larger, fewer.
Still missing depth and realism. Let’s repeat everything for Layer 6—but use Motion Blur at the opposite angle—32°. Adjust levels again to bring out flakes.
If needed, tweak earlier layers for better snow realism. You could even add yellow leaves to suggest an early snowfall—or remove more to hint at thick drifts.
Add text, snowflakes, effects, menus, promo banners—whatever you like. The snow effect and tone are set.
Conclusion
Christmas and New Year are celebrated all over the world. Magical, joyful for kids and adults—they create moments we remember forever. And the internet is no exception. Think how nice it feels to visit a festive website right before the holidays. How it lifts your mood. And how quickly you’re tempted to buy something beautifully presented—only to later wonder: did I really need it?
Holiday web design isn’t about strict trends or clichés. You can create promo pages in any flavor—from bold and bright to subtle winter scenes. Icons can be red-green or simple lines. That’s up to the designer. The main thing is the feeling. Wintery. Festive. Cheerful. Kind. Often, even one themed photo and a few snowflakes are enough to transform a project.
There's plenty of creative inspiration—without it, no themed update can succeed.