These rules apply to all users of wallhaven. Not following them may result in your uploads being removed or you losing the ability to create posts, upload, flag or tag. If you have questions about any of them, please ask a staff member or in the forum. Note that in a few cases there will be exceptions to these rules where staff will use their best judgment in the interest of the site.
Notice: These rules may be updated at any time.
Forum
- Posts must be in English.
- Use descriptive thread titles.
- Do not format titles or posts to attract attention (all caps, symbols, etc.)
- Do not use the forums (or the rest of the site for that matter) for advertising.
- No personal attacks on other users—contact a staff member directly to resolve issues.
- Posts inciting hatred or made purely to antagonize or provoke others are not allowed - Be nice.
Uploading
Before uploading, ask yourself: "Is this a wallpaper? Would anyone be able to use this as a wallpaper?" If the answer is no, don't upload it!
- Respect copyright. Attribute the author wherever possible. Do not upload content from banned sources. Do not remove artist signatures/watermarks.
- Sexual content and other overly sexual images are all strictly prohibited.
Details...
Sexual content includes:
- Masturbation, oral sex, sex toys, penetration, bodily fluids, etc.
- Closeups of genitals, focus on genitals.
- Overly sexual posing: Spread legs, bent over nude, hands on genitals, 'presenting' genitals, stretching/gaping of genitals, etc.
- Child pornography (including lolicon/shotacon).
This does NOT include:- Full nudity.
- Exposed genitals (non overly sexual pose).
- Do not stretch images to a higher resolution—upload the original version where possible.
- No low-quality edits (rotated, mirrored or picture-in-picture images, cobbled together collages). Details...
Low quality can mean:
- Upscaled images: Taking a smaller image and increasing the dimensions of it. This will alway result in a loss of quality when viewing at full resolution.
- High levels of artifacting: Noise induced by an ISO value set too high, high levels of JPEG/compression artifacts, color banding.
- Bad editing: Renders with jagged non-stylized edges, 'bad photoshops.'
- Some camera raw shots: A rare exception to the 'original size' rule; Some shots which would be acceptable at a standard wallpaper size can look poor when not scaled down. If uploading photos, consider how they look at full resolution.
- Low quality scans, photos of text, etc.
- The minimum resolution is 1280x800 for landscape images and 800x1280 for portraits.
This does NOT include:- Noise added/used for artistic value.
- "Stylized LQ" such as vaporwave, or glitch art.
- A maximum of 5 images per set (photo shoot / AI prompt) are allowed. Details...
- A "set" is defined as a series of photos taken of the same subject in the same or very similar place.
- This rule is not set to one user's uploads. In other words, if parts of a set are already uploaded, any additional uploads from that set will be removed.
- AI Art generated with the same or similar prompt is considered a part of the same set.
- No private photos (of family, friends, your vacation, etc.) or amateur porn.
- No promotional material (i.e. with large watermarks), red carpet/press event photos or low-resolution samples.
- Only high-quality screenshots of movies, TV series, anime, and video games are allowed. Screenshots must not contain overlays/HUDs/Logos. Screenshots of desktops are not allowed.
- No gore or other such disturbing content.
- When uploading a varied set of images, tag and flag them separately so that content is sorted accurately.
- No material depicting or promoting hatred or propaganda, except when used harmlessly in fiction, art, parodies, etc.
We reserve the right to change these rules and/or remove any content from the site at any time.
Purity
Purity or flagging is how we filter wallpapers based on content. Remember to use your best judgment - If you can't decide if a wallpaper is SFW or Sketchy, mark it Sketchy.
- SFW
- Images that are considered safe for work.
- Contain no violence or sexually suggestive content.
- Sketchy
- Images with a subject in underwear, swim-wear, lingerie, latex, etc. but no genitals or (female) nipples showing.
- Low cut tops/High cut bottoms/Lightly provocative poses.
- Images containing profanity, drugs/drug references, war and death.
- Non-graphic violence such as blood spatter, and images of guns in use.
- Controversial political/religious symbols such as Nazism.
- NSFW
- Images with nudity, including cupped/covered breasts, strategic covering, implied nudity, bare asses and genitals/nipples visible through clothing.
- Extremely suggestive poses (bent over/hands on genitals/etc.).
- Bondage and BDSM in general, with or without nudity.
- Images with graphic violence.
Tagging
- Common terms should be lowercase (nature). Capitalize proper nouns (people, places, titles) according to the official spelling (The Lord of the Rings). Titles of foreign creative works should use their original title, but transliterated into English where necessary (Nichijou instead of 日常).
- Add other titles/other language names as aliases when creating tags.
- Tags are for categorizing images so users can find them, not needlessly describing them or to show off. Consider how useful a tag is before adding it, and how you would search for the image.
- Tags should describe what the image depicts (buildings, sunset) and should not be expressing a view (beautiful, ugly).
- Do not use synonyms (alternative words for the same term)—just the most common/correct one (Daenerys Targaryen instead of Khaleesi).
- Tags should not contain links (somedude.deviantart.com)—use the author/publisher's name (Some Dude) instead.
- Do not create tags for self-promotion/advertising.
- Celebrities and other figures should be tagged with their full or stage names, except for those going by just a single one (Carisha). For Japanese names such as anime characters, use the traditional order of last name-first name (Hatsune Miku).
- Terms referring to multiple things should have separate tags labeled using parentheses, like Prometheus (movie) and Prometheus (spaceship).
- Check your spelling, even if English is your first language! The site uses American English ("color" instead of "colour", etc.) Specific foreign names like Notre Dame are an exception.
- AI Art or any other AI generated content MUST be tagged with the AI Art tag.