Mandala and rosette pattern generator

Rings around a center

A mandala (a Sanskrit word for “circle”) is a design arranged around a center. In Hindu and Buddhist traditions, mandalas are diagrams for ritual and meditation, but the idea of a rosette, a round ornament made of repeating petals, is much older and more widespread: it is found in rose windows, carved stone, ceramic tile and textiles all over the world.

The rule behind every rosette is rotational symmetry. An n-fold rosette looks the same when turned by one n-th of a full circle. The more sectors, the closer it gets to a circle; with few sectors it becomes a star or a flower.

How the generator builds them

Ornamatic divides the rosette into concentric rings. Each ring gets a motif (a petal, a diamond, a triangle, a mosaic sector, a dart or a dot), a size, and a count that is a multiple of the symmetry order, so all the rings share the same symmetry. Some rings are turned by half a step, which makes the pattern interlock. A small flower sits in the center.

The rings are drawn from a seed, so “Shuffle” gives a new rosette with the same symmetry. The rosettes sit on a square or a hexagonal grid, and the pattern repeats exactly across the edges of the tile. Colors go around the rings in turn, so a palette with three colors gives layered rosettes.

What you can adjust

• Motifs — mixed, petals, geometric shapes (diamonds, triangles, mosaic sectors and darts) or dots.
• Symmetry — from three to twenty-four identical sectors.
• Rings — from one to nine.
• Rosette size and grid — the radius in lattice spacings, on a square or hexagonal grid.
• Draw — filled shapes or outlines, with an adjustable line width.
• Shuffle — a new random arrangement of the rings.
• Colors — any palette.

Export and use

Download the seamless tile as PNG or SVG, or copy a ready CSS background. The patterns you create are free to use, personally or commercially.