Winter wallpapers

Winter has a particular quiet. Snow absorbs sound, light is low and long, and colours narrow down to white, blue and a little orange. The pictures on this page work in that range: snow-covered fields, frosted branches, cabins with a single lit window, and a pale sun over drifts.

The most striking pictures are the high-key ones, bright and clean, where nearly the whole screen is white with soft blue shadows. They give a desktop a calm, airy feel, though you may find icons need a darker label colour to be readable. Dusk and night pictures are warmer and use lit windows and lamps to contrast with the cold.

Snow also means texture, from fine powder to hard crust, and it is worth viewing the pictures at full size to see it.

Wide landscapes work across monitors, and tall frames of a single pine or a lantern are suited to phones. If you want ice, glaciers and frozen surfaces, the ice page covers those, while the mountain page includes snow peaks. The forest page has snowy woods as well, and the moon page has winter nights.

72 winter wallpapers (35 for desktop, 11 for phones, 26 square), all free to download in 4K as PNG or JPEG.

From the themes Train on the glacier, Split-season fungi, Split-season leaves, Polar ice, Arctic waste, Village in a snow globe, Underwater, Dry forest.