To make a vaporwave aesthetic photo, convert it to a palette built from pink, magenta, lavender and cyan against a deep navy, add scanlines or VHS-style degradation, and pick source material that belongs to the late 1980s and 1990s: statues, palm trees, empty malls, old computers, sunsets. The palette does most of the work. The imagery decides whether it lands as vaporwave or just as a pink photo.
What is the vaporwave aesthetic? #
Vaporwave is an internet music microgenre and visual style that emerged in the early 2010s. According to Wikipedia’s article on vaporwave, it began with releases including Chuck Person’s “Eccojams Vol. 1” in August 2010, James Ferraro’s “Far Side Virtual” in October 2011, and Macintosh Plus’s “Floral Shoppe” in December 2011, and it found a wider audience through Last.fm, Reddit and 4chan around 2012.
The visual half draws on 1990s web design, glitch art, anime, Greco-Roman statuary, Memphis Design geometric shapes, early 3D renders and VHS degradation. Artists generally keep source material between Japan’s 1980s economic peak and about 2001. The style is often written in fullwidth characters as ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣ.
That list is a useful checklist. A vaporwave edit usually combines at least two of those elements: the right subject, the right colors, and the right kind of visual decay.
Which photos work? #
Vaporwave imagery leans on a specific mood: commercial spaces without people in them, obsolete technology, and things that look like a screensaver.
- Classical statues and busts. The single most recognizable vaporwave subject. Museum gift shops and garden centers both sell them.
- Palm trees against a sky, especially at sunset.
- Empty commercial interiors. Malls, office lobbies, escalators, hotel corridors, parking structures.
- Old technology. CRT monitors, landline phones, cassette tapes, early home computers.
- Swimming pools, tiled floors, checkerboards, grids.
- Neon signage and city streets at night.
What doesn’t work: crowds, action, anything that looks current, and photos where the subject is obviously a modern phone-camera shot of a modern place. The aesthetic depends on looking like a recovered artifact.
The vaporwave color palette #
The palette is the shortcut. A 16-color vaporwave palette runs from near-black navy through purples and lavenders into hot pink and cyan, with a pale, almost-white top end:
| Role | Hex codes |
|---|---|
| Deep background | #01012b, #20214f, #414073 |
| Mid purples | #666097, #9180bb, #bca0df |
| Pinks and magentas | #e7c1ff, #ff6ad5, #c774e8 |
| Lavender and periwinkle | #ad8cff, #8795e8 |
| Cyans and teals | #94d0ff, #00cdac, #0dc2ff, #0befeb |
| Highlight | #d9f8ff |
Those are the values Pixelize ships as its Vapor Wave palette. The two things that make it read as vaporwave are the width of the gap between pink and cyan, which is close to a complementary pair, and the fact that there’s no true white or true black. Everything is tinted.
If you want to build your own version, keep three rules: a dark navy or purple as the darkest value, hot pink and cyan as the two loudest colors, and nothing neutral. How to make a custom pixel art color palette covers building and saving one by hex code.
Step by step on a phone #
- Crop first. Square or 4:5 works well, and centering a statue or a single object is the classic composition.
- Pick a pixel size. Vaporwave tolerates a finer grid than most pixel art, because the palette carries the style. Around 60 to 90 cells across keeps the subject legible. In Pixelize, that’s 8px or 12px on its 720-pixel working copy.
- Choose the palette. Vapor Wave on the Color tab, or Cyberpunk and Neon for a harder, more nocturnal version of the same idea.
- Turn on dithering. This palette is where dithering pays off most. Skies and gradients between pink and cyan break into ugly bands without it. Try Bayer or Ordered first, since the regular crosshatch reads as old display hardware, then compare it with Atkinson. What dithering is explains the difference.
- Adjust the tone. Raise saturation a little and lower contrast slightly. Vaporwave images are saturated and hazy rather than punchy.
- Add CRT scanlines on the FX tab. This is the finishing move, and it’s what makes the image look like a photograph of a screen rather than a filter.
- Export at XL and save.
Scanlines, VHS and the decayed look #
Vaporwave borrows from two different kinds of visual decay, and they aren’t the same thing.
CRT scanlines come from television and monitor screens: thin horizontal lines, slight glow, sometimes a curve at the edges. Pixelize’s scanline effect on the FX tab produces the line pattern. The CRT scanline effect on photos covers how it works and when it suits an image.
VHS artifacts come from tape: color bleeding, tracking lines, chroma shift, a soft and slightly wobbly picture. Pixel converters generally don’t produce these, so if you want tape damage specifically, you’ll need a dedicated glitch or VHS app on top. Stacking the two effects is common, and it’s also easy to overdo.
A quiet version of either usually beats a loud version of both.
Adding fullwidth text #
The stretched-out lettering in vaporwave art uses Unicode fullwidth characters, which are the wide forms designed to sit on the same grid as Japanese characters. Typing ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣ instead of AESTHETIC is a character substitution, not a font.
There are free converters online that transform ordinary text into fullwidth forms, and you can then paste the result into any text tool. Pixel converters that only process images, including Pixelize, don’t add text, so this step happens in a separate app.
Keep it short. One or two words, usually placed low or off to one side.
Where people overdo it #
The aesthetic has a small vocabulary, so it’s easy to use all of it at once. A photo with a statue, a palm tree, a grid floor, a Windows 95 window, scanlines, VHS tracking and fullwidth text is a collage of references rather than an image.
Pick one subject, one palette and one texture. The restraint is what separates an edit that looks intentional from one that looks like a filter pack.
Frequently asked questions #
What colors are used in vaporwave? #
Hot pink and magenta paired with cyan and teal, over deep navy and purple, with pale lavender highlights. True black and pure white are usually avoided, which is why the images look tinted and hazy.
Is vaporwave the same as synthwave? #
They overlap but differ in mood. Synthwave is darker and more cinematic, built on neon grids, sunsets and 1980s film imagery. Vaporwave is softer, more pastel, more ironic, and leans on 1990s commercial and computer imagery. The palettes are close enough that the same converter presets work for both.
How do I make a vaporwave photo on my phone? #
Convert the photo with a pink-and-cyan palette, dither it, then add scanlines. Pixelize does all three on iPhone and Android for free, and everything runs on the device. Fullwidth text needs a separate text tool.
What font does vaporwave use? #
It usually isn’t a font. The wide lettering comes from Unicode fullwidth characters, which any app can display, and from Japanese katakana. When a font is involved it’s often a 1990s system typeface such as a bitmap UI font.
Do I need dithering for a vaporwave image? #
Almost always, yes. The palette has large gaps between its colors, so smooth areas like skies and skin band badly without it. Bayer and Ordered dithering also add a screen-like texture that fits the aesthetic.