Diagonal stripes can be used to give a design a more dynamic and modern feel, the downside is that they tend to involve quite a bit of messing with in Photoshop to create a completely seamless pattern, you only have to be 1 pixel out to ruin the effect.

Stripe Generator is an online tool that makes the process a breeze, you simply decide on the stripe size, spacing and colour and it creates a tile which you can then download ready to use.

You can even choose to use one of the many examples already created by other users.