Does tiled PC desktop wallpaper still exist?

July 11, 2005 4:50 PM

Anyone know a good source of tiled wallpaper backgrounds for a computer desktop?

I mostly use a PC nowadays, but I remember back on some of the earlier color macs you were pretty much confined to wallpapers of at most 64 pixel repeating patterns. Or maybe not, but I think that's what I seem to recall. Anyway, I still find it more aesthetically pleasing than most fullscreen wallpapers. There are thousands of hideous full-screen wallpaper sites replete with spyware, but I can't seem to find a site that provides a repository of tile-style wallpaper backgrounds.

posted by BigPicnic to technology (11 comments total)

Three biggies:
Squidfingers, k10k, and Taz's site.

I've also found VladStudio (was SoftShape) and Veer to have pleasant, high-quality non-tiled wallpapers.
posted by SemiSophos at 5:13 PM on July 11, 2005

Other good suggestions last time this question was asked.
But it is an excellent question, as I always forget to bookmark these sites so I lose them right away.
posted by librarina at 5:29 PM on July 11, 2005

This page has a buncha damask wallpaper patterns.
posted by ijoshua at 5:30 PM on July 11, 2005

This site has some nice ones: Eos

Nowhere near as simplified as a Mac background, but I really like the Propaganda tiling backgrounds too.
posted by Rubber Soul at 5:55 PM on July 11, 2005

I've always liked Deviant Art, which has a fair amount of interesting stuff on it from wallpapers to icons and skins for various applications. Be warned the site can be slow as mud sometimes.
posted by Zack_Replica at 5:57 PM on July 11, 2005

Thanks a lot everyone; and sorry- I had no idea it had been asked (and so recently) I tried searching "tiled wallpaper" and "tiled background" but the original didn't ask in the same way. My bad.

But uh, nevertheless, these are some great sites- exactly what I was looking for.
posted by BigPicnic at 6:31 PM on July 11, 2005

PixelDecor hasn't been mentioned, and they have a nice assortment of background tiles.
posted by geeky at 7:31 PM on July 11, 2005

You could always make your own. I remember (iirc) using Paint Shop Pro and making my own tiled wallpapers - no limit to pixel size.

There were ones where "wow, that's sweet - it looks like one *big* picture" and then there were a lot of "ugh, you can see the meld lines."
posted by PurplePorpoise at 8:36 PM on July 11, 2005

If you like tiled wallpapers, Don Barnett makes lots of lovely tiles that are available for download as shareware.
posted by mewithoutyou at 11:37 PM on July 11, 2005

An amazing list from all these links. Thanks.
posted by webmeta at 12:38 AM on July 12, 2005

I meant to reply to this in a timely fashion, but then it whoosed off the front page and I forgot.

Tesselations.org and Totally Tesselated, for two, have lots of tesselations that work nicely as tiled background images. It's easy to find more by googling for 'tesselation.'
posted by Zed_Lopez at 1:08 PM on July 15, 2005