Can I use different wallpapers on my iPhone’s lock screen and home screen?

Yes. When you add a wallpaper, choose Customize Home Screen instead of Set as Wallpaper Pair, then tap Photos and pick a second picture for the home screen.

How do I make my home screen a plain colour that matches my wallpaper?

On iPhone, customise the home screen and choose the colour option. On Android, use a plain colour from your phone’s built-in wallpapers if it has them, or crop a calm, single-colour area of the wallpaper itself.

How do I find wallpapers with the same colours?

Every wallpaper page on Athiwalls shows its five main colours. Tap one to search for other wallpapers in a similar colour.

How to make a matching lock screen and home screen set

Your lock screen and home screen do different jobs. The lock screen is the cover: you glance at it dozens of times a day, and nothing covers it but the clock. The home screen is where you work, with a grid of icons on top. A good set respects that difference: the lock screen gets the picture, and the home screen gets a calmer version of the same idea.

Here are four ways to make a pair, from the simplest to the most personal.

1. One wallpaper, two treatments

The easiest set uses the same picture on both screens, softened on the home screen.

On iPhone: add the wallpaper, choose Customize Home Screen, keep the same picture and tap Blur. The lock screen stays sharp, and the home screen gets a frosted version in exactly the same colours. The guide to setting a wallpaper on iPhone has the full steps.

On Android: most phones have no blur option, but you can make a blurred copy yourself. Open the picture in an editor with a blur tool, such as the free Snapseed, whose Lens Blur works across the whole frame once you shrink its sharp area as small as it goes. Save the result as a new picture. Set the original on the lock screen and the blurred copy on the home screen.

2. Two crops of one picture

A single wallpaper often holds two good pictures. Set the whole scene on the lock screen, then zoom into a quieter part of it, a stretch of sky, a calm sea, a soft hillside, for the home screen.

You can zoom in a little without losing sharpness, as long as the file is larger than your screen. Athiwalls phone wallpapers are 1440 pixels wide, so on a phone with a screen around 1180 pixels wide, you can zoom in by about a fifth and stay crisp. On a 1080-pixel screen, about a third. Beyond that, the home screen starts to soften, which suits a background anyway.

3. A picture and its colours

For the calmest home screen, swap the picture for one of its colours.

On iPhone: customise the home screen and choose the colour or gradient option, then adjust it until it sits comfortably beside your lock screen. A colour slightly darker than the one you’d first pick usually works better behind white labels.

On Android: some wallpaper pickers include plain colours. If yours doesn’t, crop a single-colour area of the wallpaper itself and enlarge it until it’s just colour.

Every Athiwalls wallpaper page shows its five main colours, with the exact code for each. Take Aurora Ridge: a lock screen of green aurora over a black ridge, with a home screen in its deep indigo, reads as one design. On iOS 18 and later, you can carry it further by choosing Tinted icons and setting the tint close to the same colour.

On a Pixel, the system does part of this for you: it takes its accent colours from your home screen wallpaper, so a well-chosen home picture tints your whole phone to match.

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One of three slots, seen by people choosing what goes on their screen.

4. Two wallpapers that belong together

The most personal set uses two different pictures that share something. Look for wallpapers with:

The same palette. Tap a colour swatch on any Athiwalls wallpaper page to search for others in a similar colour.
The same light. Two dusk scenes pair better than a dusk scene and a midday one, even in similar colours.
The same texture. Two painted pictures, or two photographs, sit together more easily than one of each.
The same mood. Browsing one collection, like abstract, keeps a set coherent without much effort.

Give the busier picture to the lock screen and the calmer one to the home screen, where icons need the space.

Mistakes to avoid

Two busy pictures. A detailed home screen makes icons hard to read, however good it looks on its own. The guide to wallpapers that keep icons readable has quick tests.
Clashing temperatures. A warm amber lock screen and an icy blue home screen feel like two different phones. Keep both warm or both cool.
A brighter home screen than lock screen. It feels like stepping into a lit room every time you unlock. Let the home screen be the darker, quieter half.

Take it to your desktop

The same thinking works across devices. Pick a desktop wallpaper from the same collection or palette as your phone, and your laptop and phone start to feel like a set. The desktop collection is a good place to start, and the colour search works the same way there.