Drop a photo anywhere on this page, or pick one below. Portraits and high-contrast images work best, and your image is processed here in the page rather than uploaded.
Exact counts per color
A settings link carries every control on this page, but not your photo — whoever opens it drops in their own. Click a color to exclude it and rebuild the mosaic without it. Screen colors are approximate, and availability varies by element, so check each color for the part you plan to order.
Drop in a photo, pick a width in studs, and get a buildable LEGO mosaic pattern matched to 40 real production brick colors — plus the parts list, a numbered build guide, and a BrickLink wanted-list XML you can paste straight into the mass-upload field. Merge the rows into longer stock and a 48×48 portrait drops from 2,304 elements to about 500.
LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group, and BrickLink is a LEGO Group company. Neither sponsors, authorizes nor endorses Brick Mosaic. This is an independent tool that names them only to say what it works with.
Everything people ask before starting a brick mosaic.
Drop a JPG, PNG or WebP into Brick Mosaic, pick a width in studs, and the LEGO mosaic pattern appears immediately. The mosaic is matched against 40 real production brick colors using OKLab color distance, which is a perceptual measurement rather than a raw RGB one, so skin tones and shadows land on the shade a builder would actually pick. Nothing is uploaded: the image is decoded and quantized inside the browser tab. Export the mosaic PNG, the numbered build guide, a CSV parts list, or a wanted-list XML file.
One piece per stud, so the count is width times height. A single 48×48 baseplate mosaic takes 2,304 pieces and measures 38.4 by 38.4 cm, or about 15 inches square. A 32×32 build takes 1,024 pieces at 25.6 cm. Turn on Merge into longer pieces and the same mosaic packs into 1x2 through 1x8 stock: a measured 48x48 portrait drops from 2,304 elements to 524, a 77% cut, because bulk 1x4 plates cost a fraction of 1x1s. Brick Mosaic prints exact per-color counts either way.
A wanted-list XML file is the bulk-import format used by BrickLink, the largest secondhand LEGO marketplace. Brick Mosaic writes one ITEM block per color, carrying the part number, the marketplace color ID, and the quantity you need. Paste the file contents into BrickLink's Wanted List mass-upload field and the whole order populates in one step instead of forty manual searches. The part number follows the piece type you chose: 3024 for a 1×1 plate, 4073 for a round plate, 98138 for a round tile, 3070b for a tile, 3005 for a brick. With merging on it writes the whole ladder, 3023 through 3460 for plates, so the list you upload is the list you build from.
Square 1×1 plates are the best default for portraits. The square face fills the whole cell so there are no gaps, and the grid stays quiet enough that the picture reads from across the room. Round tiles suit graphic, poster-style images: the round face leaves a visible baseplate lattice between pieces, which reads as texture up close and as a halftone dot at a distance. Brick Mosaic previews all five types live, so you can switch and compare before committing.
Width is the only real decision, because a stud is 8 mm and the physical size follows. 48 studs is the standard single-baseplate LEGO portrait and the size most official mosaic sets use. Below 32 studs a face stops being recognizable. Above 64 the piece count passes 4,000 and sourcing gets expensive. Brick Mosaic snaps to whole 16, 32 or 48-stud baseplates on request and reports how many baseplates the current size needs.
Yes. Open the parts list and click any color to exclude it. Brick Mosaic re-quantizes the whole image without it and the counts redistribute across the colors that remain. This matters because a handful of shades cost several times what a common one does in bulk, and a mosaic that needs 200 of an expensive color is a different project from one that does not. Excluded colors stay excluded until you click them again, and Copy settings link hands the whole configuration to someone else — the controls travel, the photo does not.
Yes to free, no to uploading. Brick Mosaic is a single HTML page with no account, no payment, and no export limit. The photo is read with the browser's own file API and every step, including the color matching and the PNG encoding, runs on your device. Nothing crosses the network after the page itself loads, which is why it still works with the tab offline.
The build guide is a printable PNG showing every stud as a numbered cell, with row and column rulers along two edges and a heavy rule every 16 studs so the mosaic breaks into named sections such as A1 and B2. Each number keys to a color in the legend strip below the grid, which lists the swatch, the color name, and the count. Download it as a PNG, or as a multi-page PDF that puts each 16x16 section on its own Letter page at full size with the parts list on page two. Building section by section is how large mosaics get assembled without losing your place.