Free Diamond Grid Generator

The angle setting controls how far each family leans, so the angle between the two families is twice whatever you set. At 45° they are 90° apart — perpendicular — and the rhombus becomes a square standing on one corner.

That case is worth isolating because it is the one most people mean by diamond grid. A square turned 45° is still a square, so the cells have right angles and equal diagonals. Their horizontal and vertical extent is √2 times the spacing, which is 1.414, and that is the number you need when fitting a repeat into a fixed width.

Below 45° the diamonds get taller and narrower. At 30° the acute angle of the rhombus is 60°, which makes it two equilateral triangles joined along an edge — the sixty-degree diamond of English paper piecing, and the cell that tiles into the tumbling-block illusion.

Above 45° the diamonds flatten out, and here is a symmetry worth knowing: 60° produces exactly the same rhombus as 30°, standing on a different side. So does 70° against 20°. Half the slider duplicates the other half, rotated a quarter turn, which means the useful decision is really how far from 45° rather than which side of it.

The side length of the rhombus follows a simple rule: it is the spacing divided by the sine of twice the angle. At 45° that is 1 — the side equals the spacing exactly. At 30° or 60° it is 1.155. At 20° or 70° it is 1.556. Away from 45° the cells are always larger than the spacing suggests, which surprises people planning a repeat.

Turning off the opposite family gives you something else entirely: a single set of parallel diagonals. That is not a lattice, it is a direction, and it has its own uses — hatching guides, stripe layouts, an axis to build a composition along, the warp direction in a woven structure.

The pattern's history is long and thoroughly domestic. Diamond lattices appear in Egyptian tomb painting, in Roman opus reticulatum masonry, in Islamic girih tiling, in medieval leaded glass, in Japanese kikkō and hishi textile patterns, and in the trellis fencing of every European garden that ever had one. Anywhere two sets of things cross, this shape appears.

The diamond and rhombus overlay page traces those uses, beside the rest of the specialty grid overlays. Harlequin is the theatrical case. The commedia dell'arte character's costume — diamonds of alternating colour on point — is documented from the sixteenth century and became fixed as the visual signature of the role. The pattern in that form is a 45° lattice with alternating fills, and it carries connotations of playfulness and duplicity that have survived into contemporary graphic design.

Argyle is the knitted case, and it is not a 45° lattice. It comes from the tartan of Clan Campbell of Argyll and is built on tall diamonds — typically in the region of 25° to 30° — overlaid with a finer set of contrasting diagonal lines. That elongation is what distinguishes argyle from a harlequin at a glance, and it is why the angle control here matters more than it might seem.

Heraldry has its own vocabulary for the same shapes. A field divided into a diamond lattice is lozengy; the individual cell is a lozenge; a taller, narrower version is a fusil; a lozenge with a hole in it is a mascle. The distinction between lozenge and fusil is precisely the angle distinction this overlay makes.

In craft the lattice maps onto specific techniques. At sixty degrees the lattice becomes the triangular grid seen another way, and for a stitch-by-stitch chart the cross-stitch grid maker counts squares instead. Sixty-degree diamonds are the basis of English paper piecing and of tumbling-block quilts. Diamond twill is a fundamental weave structure. Argyle is intarsia knitting. Diamond-point parquetry is a woodworking pattern. In every case the angle is not decorative — it is determined by the technique.

For composition, a diamond lattice does something a square grid does not: it removes the horizontal and vertical from the structure. A square grid reinforces the frame's own edges; a diamond grid opposes them, which introduces tension. That can be exactly right for a subject with diagonal energy and exactly wrong for one that needs to sit still.

The most common practical use over a photograph is recovering an angle. Lay the grid on a picture of a lattice window, a tiled floor, a knitted garment or a fence, and adjust until the families lie along the subject's own lines. That gives you the angle in one step, where measuring it off the object involves a protractor and a decision about which line to measure from.

For pattern design, the two settings are close to a complete specification. Angle and density between them determine every cell in the lattice, so recording those two numbers is enough to reproduce the pattern later at any size — which is not true of a pattern designed by eye.

There is a moiré risk to be aware of. A diamond lattice at a shallow angle over a photograph containing fine repeating texture — fabric, brickwork, a screen — can produce interference patterns that are entirely an artefact of the two grids beating against each other. Change the density a step and it disappears.

The density control counts divisions of the short side measured perpendicular to the lines, not along the frame edges. That is the correct way to measure the spacing of a line family, and it means the density number stays meaningful as you change the angle, which it would not if it were measured along an edge.

For printing, remember that a diamond lattice at 45° puts more line length per unit area than a square grid at the same density, because the lines run the long way across each cell. Drop the opacity one step from what you would use for a square grid to match the printed weight.

The grid draws over your own image rather than exporting a fixed template because where the lattice sits determines which of the subject's features land on crossings, and crossings are the registration points. Shifting by half a cell changes the whole relationship.

Export sizes itself from the paper format and the DPI you choose rather than from your screen. SVG keeps every line editable, which is what you want when cells will be filled selectively for a pattern.

Everything runs in your browser. Images you load are never uploaded, because there is no server for them to reach. The drawing, the transform and the export all happen on your own machine.