Perler Bead Pattern Maker
Free perler bead pattern maker: upload a photo and turn it into a Perler or Hama bead pattern — entirely in your browser.
PerlerHama100% in-browser
Free perler bead pattern maker: upload a photo and turn it into a Perler or Hama bead pattern — entirely in your browser.
This perler bead pattern maker converts any picture into a bead-by-bead template for Perler and Hama beads. It matches every pixel to a real bead color, counts exactly how many beads of each color you need, and tells you how many pegboards the design takes — so you can shop and build with confidence.
It supports all three common bead sizes: Mini (2.5 mm) for high-detail work, Midi/Standard (5 mm) for classic projects, and Maxi (10 mm) for kids. Pixel-art characters, logos, and simple photos work best. Keep the color count low for a clean look, and print the PDF template at 100% size to lay beads directly on top of it.
PNG, JPG, or WEBP — pixel art and images with transparent backgrounds work perfectly.
Choose the bead size (2.5, 5, or 10 mm), pattern width, and maximum number of colors.
Get a printable PDF with the bead grid, color legend, bead counts, and pegboard count.
When you upload a picture, the converter resamples it to your chosen bead width: set the width to 58 beads and the image becomes a grid 58 columns across, where every square is one bead sitting on one peg. Height follows automatically from the picture's aspect ratio. That single width slider is the most important decision you make, because it controls both how much detail survives and how many pegboards you build on.
After resampling comes color matching. A photo holds thousands of shades, but you fuse from a fixed tray of beads, so the converter reduces the image to the number of colors you allow, then snaps each one to the nearest real bead in the range you picked — a muddy digital teal becomes a coded bead like Perler P17046 that you can find in a bag. Everything runs in your browser, so nothing is uploaded and every slider redraws the chart live. When it looks right, the PDF gives you the grid, legend, and counts to build from.
Fuse-bead pegboards are finite. The standard square board for 5 mm midi beads holds 29 pegs across and 29 down, so any width up to 29 beads lives on a single board; switch to 2.5 mm mini beads and the standard board is a finer 49×49 grid. Ask for more than one board’s width and the design has to be tiled across several boards laid edge to edge — with midi beads, a 58-bead-wide piece is two boards across, an 87-bead piece is three, and so on in both directions. The tool does this arithmetic for the bead size you picked and reports the total number of boards a pattern needs, so you know before you start whether you own enough.
Plan the width against the boards you actually own. For a design that finishes on four boards in a 2×2 grid, keep the width at or under 58 beads and let the height fall where it may. When you tile, build one board at a time and fuse each section separately, then join the fused panels by matching the last column of one board to the first column of the next. Marking the board boundaries on your printed PDF before you place a single bead saves a lot of miscounting halfway up a leg.
The brand toggle changes which real palette the converter matches against. Perler and Hama each publish their own color range with their own codes, and they are not identical — a warm red in one range has no exact twin in the other, so the chart you get from the Perler setting can differ from the Hama one even for the same photo. Pick the brand you will actually buy first, then let the matcher work within that range so every color on your legend is a bead you can order rather than an approximation.
Mixing brands in one project is tempting when you are short a color, but be cautious: Perler and Hama beads melt at slightly different rates, so a board that blends the two can fuse unevenly, with one brand still glossy while the other has already flattened. If you must mix, keep each brand in its own region rather than scattered through a gradient, and test-fuse a spare row first.
Size is a detail-versus-effort trade. Midi (also called standard) beads are 5 mm (about 3/16 in) — the classic size, easy to pick up with fingers, and right for most projects. Mini beads are 2.5 mm (roughly 1/10 in), so a mini piece packs four times the beads into the same area and holds far finer detail, which is why small sprites and intricate logos shine at mini size. The cost is real: mini beads need tweezers, a steadier hand, and more patience per square inch. For an early project or a gift you want finished this weekend, midi is the forgiving pick.
Fuse beads are a low-resolution, hard-edged medium, so images that are already low-resolution and hard-edged convert best. Pixel-art characters, game sprites, flat logos, emoji, and bold two- or three-tone graphics are ideal — their shapes are built on a grid to begin with, so reducing them to a bead grid loses almost nothing. If you already have a pixel-art screenshot or a chart image, upload it directly and the result comes out crisp.
Busy photographs are the hard case. A face that occupies only 30 beads across cannot show much more than eyes and a mouth, and detailed backgrounds steal colors from the subject you care about. When you bead from a photo, drop the width lower rather than higher so each bead represents a meaningful area, and keep the color count modest so shapes stay legible instead of dissolving into speckle. If the background competes with your subject, run the picture through the background remover first — the cleared area becomes empty pegs, so every color in your limit goes to the subject. And when no photo fits, build the design deliberately in the pattern designer and bring it straight here.
On screen, more colors look smoother; on the board, more colors mean more digging through your tray and more stray single beads to place. The bigger constraint is your actual stash: a converter can call for eleven shades of green, but if your kit only contains three, that chart is unbuildable. Set the max-colors slider to roughly what you own — many builders work happily inside 8 to 15 colors — and let the matcher consolidate the rest.
Read the per-color counts before you commit, because that list is your shopping list. Fuse beads are usually sold in bags of a known count — a common bag holds about 1,000 — so divide each color's count by the beads per bag to see how many bags to buy, and round up. Watch the one or two colors with huge counts: a sky or background can easily run into the thousands, and those, not the accents, decide how much you actually need to order.
Ironing is where a good chart becomes a good keychain or coaster — or a curled mess. Cover the placed beads with the parchment/ironing paper that came with your beads (regular parchment baking paper works too), and never let a hot iron touch the beads directly. Set the iron to medium with the steam off, and move it in slow, even circles so pressure and heat spread across the whole board rather than melting a hot spot in the middle.
Watch through the paper: you want the bead holes to just close into little rings, not disappear into a flat sheet — stop as soon as the tops round over. Uneven or one-sided pressure is what makes a panel warp, so keep the motion circular and check the corners, which cool and lift first. For a flat result, fuse both sides: let the piece cool fully, peel it off the board, flip it, and fuse the back the same way. While it cools, press it under something heavy and smooth — a sheet of masonite, a cutting board, or a stack of books — so it sets dead flat instead of bowing as it hardens.
Yes — 100% free with no account and no limits. The printable PDF template is free too.
Yes. Standard 5 mm patterns fit both Perler and Hama Midi; the Mini setting matches Hama Mini (2.5 mm) and Maxi matches Hama Maxi (10 mm).
The tool shows the exact number of boards for your pattern size, based on the standard board dimensions for each bead size.
No — everything runs in your browser, so your images stay on your device.
Pixel art, game characters, logos, and bold simple images work best. For photos, reduce the color count to 10–20 so shapes stay recognisable.
Print at 100% / actual size. Large patterns are split over several pages with an overlap strip and assembly guide, so the grid stays big enough to read.