Perler Bead Supplies — What You Actually Need, With Real Numbers
Bead sizes, pegboard peg counts, which brands mix, how many beads a board holds, and the iron settings from the manufacturer rather than from a forum. Everything specified, nothing guessed.
Fuse bead supplies look like a large category and are actually four decisions: bead size, board size, how many beads, and what you iron with. Get them right once and you never think about them again.
Bead size: midi is the standard
- Midi — 5 mm. This is the default. Unless a product says otherwise, "Perler beads" means 5 mm midi.
- Mini — 2.6 mm from Perler and Artkal; 2.5 mm from Hama and Nabbi.
- Biggie — the large children's size, sold with its own boards.
At 5 mm pitch you get 25.4 ÷ 5 = 5.08 beads per inch — the one number that converts any design between beads and inches.
Mini beads double your resolution in the same footprint — a 100-bead-wide design is 19.7 inches in midi and 9.8 inches in mini. That sounds appealing right up until you place your first thousand 2.6 mm beads with tweezers. Start with midi. Move to mini when a specific design demands detail midi cannot hold, not as a general upgrade.
The beads are low-density polyethylene (LDPE), a food-grade plastic, which is why they fuse at household iron temperatures instead of melting into a puddle.
Pegboards, with actual peg counts
Perler publishes board dimensions but not peg counts. The dimensions below are from Perler; the peg counts follow from the 5 mm pitch and are confirmed by Perler's own bead-capacity figure.
| Board | Dimensions | Pegs | Beads when full | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Large Square (the standard one) | 5.7″ × 5.7″ | 29 × 29 | 841 | | Four Large Squares interlocked | 11.4″ × 11.4″ | 58 × 58 | 3,364 | | Super-Sized Clear | 10.5″ × 14″ | approx. 53 × 71 (derived) | approx. 3,760 |
The 29 × 29 square is the unit of the whole hobby. It interlocks on two sides, so you tile it into any rectangle, and virtually every pattern online is designed in multiples of it.
The Super-Sized peg counts are our arithmetic from the published 10.5″ × 14″ dimensions at 5 mm pitch, not a manufacturer figure — treat them as approximate, since the frame edge consumes some width.
Buy clear boards, not opaque ones. A clear board lets you slide a printed pattern underneath and place beads over it, removing the counting step entirely. Biggest quality-of-life difference in the hobby, and it costs nothing extra. Every chart from the perler bead pattern maker prints at a scale you can lay a clear board over. A pegboard set (Amazon) of four large squares covers 58 × 58 beads — larger than most beginner designs.
Brands, and what actually mixes
The key fact: midi is 5 mm across every major brand, and they mix on one board with no visible seam.
| Brand | Midi size | Mixes with Perler? | | --- | --- | --- | | Perler (US) | 5 mm | — | | Hama (Denmark) | 5 mm | Yes | | Artkal S-5mm (hard) | 5 mm | Yes, per Artkal | | Nabbi | 5 mm | Yes | | Artkal R-5mm (soft) | 5 mm | No — Artkal says use separately |
Two traps in that table.
Artkal's soft series. Artkal sells hard beads (S midi, C mini) and soft beads (R midi, A mini), and states that the hard series is compatible with Perler and Hama while the soft series should be used on its own. Order S-5mm unless you specifically want the soft finish.
Minis do not cross brands cleanly. Perler and Artkal minis are 2.6 mm; Hama and Nabbi minis are 2.5 mm. A tenth of a millimetre shows up as poor fit on the pegs and uneven fusing. Pick one mini brand and stay.
On colour: Artkal has the widest single-brand palette and sells single-colour bags, which matters enormously for photo-derived designs needing eleven greys. Perler is easiest to buy in a US shop. All fuse fine.
Bulk buckets vs colour packs
A genuine fork, and it depends entirely on what you make.
Buy a bulk multi-mix bucket if you build from imagination, make things with children, or are finding out whether you like the hobby. The large Perler jar is 22,000 beads across about 30 colours, includes ironing paper, and runs around $30–$40 as of September 2026, US retail. Smaller buckets of 6,000 and bags of 18,000 exist at proportionally lower prices. Twenty-two thousand beads is about 26 full 29 × 29 boards — a useful sanity check on how far the money goes.
Buy single-colour packs if you work from patterns. The bucket problem is structural: a mixed bucket spreads evenly across 30 colours, and every real design wants a lot of three or four and none of the rest. You run out of black at 60% and still own nine thousand beads you cannot use. Anyone converting images should buy bulk beads (Amazon) by colour, driven by the chart's per-colour counts.
Most people end up with both: one bucket for free play, single colours as projects demand.
Counting beads from a chart
A converted chart gives you a count per colour, which converts directly:
beads needed = chart count for that colour × 1.1
The 10% is breakage, floor losses, and miscoloured or cracked beads. A rule of thumb, not a measurement.
Then check two things before placing:
- Board coverage. Chart width ÷ 29 rounded up, times height ÷ 29 rounded up, is how many large squares you need. A 60 × 80 design needs 3 × 3 = 9 boards, or you fuse it in sections.
- Your scarcest colour. Sort the per-colour counts descending; only the top three are worth buying extra of. Anything under about 200 beads is covered by any pack.
If you are designing rather than converting, the pixel art grid is faster — same cell-per-bead model the pegboard uses, and you can size the canvas in multiples of 29 to match your boards.
Ironing paper and parchment
Ironing paper sits between the iron and the beads. Without it you melt beads onto the iron plate and ruin both.
Perler includes a reusable sheet with most boards and bead jars. When it goes cloudy and brittle, either buy more ironing paper (Amazon) or use unbleached parchment paper, which Perler acknowledges as a working substitute and which is cheaper and in every grocery shop. Not substitutes: wax paper (the wax melts) and foil (conducts unevenly, sticks).
Fusing: the manufacturer's settings
From Perler's own instructions:
- Medium heat, dry iron. No steam.
- Ironing paper over the design, always. Never the iron directly on beads or board.
- 10–20 seconds per side, moving in slow circles or back and forth.
- Iron both sides, letting the first cool before flipping. Lift the paper occasionally to check progress.
The target is beads fused at the edges with the centre holes still open. Not an aesthetic preference — closed centres mean the plastic has flowed, and an over-fused piece warps and cannot be assembled into anything three-dimensional.
Tuning is a feedback loop: centres closing → turn the heat down. Edges not joining → turn it up. Colours fuse at different rates, so a design heavy in both white and black will not finish evenly on the first pass.
One inconsistency worth flagging: Perler's project instructions say "do not press down with the iron," while Perler's FAQ describes "firm, even pressure." They describe the same motion from different angles — you want the iron's own weight and contact, not force. If you are leaning on it, you are pressing too hard.
Cooling matters more than people expect. Let the paper cool slightly before lifting it or the beads come up with it, then let the piece cool completely under something flat and heavy. A piece that cools unweighted curls.
Perler also documents an oven method: 400 °F / roughly 200 °C for 2–3 minutes on a parchment-lined sheet, supervised and watched closely. It fuses large flat pieces more evenly than an iron, with far less margin for error.
The beginner's shopping list
- Four large square clear pegboards — 58 × 58 beads of working area
- One multi-mix bucket, 6,000 or 22,000 depending on appetite
- Ironing paper (or a roll of unbleached parchment)
- Tweezers — optional on midi, mandatory on mini
- A flat heavy object for cooling, and the iron you already own
That is the whole list. Everything else sold as a fuse bead accessory is convenience.
Start with a design under 29 × 29 so it fits one board and one fusing operation, then scale up. Browse the pattern gallery, or convert an image at 29 beads wide in the perler bead pattern maker and read the colour list before you buy anything.
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