The basics
Perler beads are tiny tubes of plastic, typically 5mm in diameter, that you arrange on a peg-studded board to form a pixel pattern. A quick pass with a household iron melts them just enough to fuse together. Once cool, you have a flat, rigid piece of art ready to hang, glue or wear. Bitbead treats every bead position as a single "pixel" — exactly the way you'd reason about a sprite in a retro video game.
Sizes and shapes
There are three common bead sizes: • Mini (2.6mm) — the highest detail, but tricky for beginners. • Midi (5mm) — by far the most popular and what every brand stocks. • Maxi (10mm) — toy-grade, great for younger kids. Bitbead is calibrated for midi by default, which means a 29×29 pegboard makes a finished piece roughly 14.5cm square.
Core brands and regional colour systems
Perler, Hama, Artkal and MARD cover the main international and Chinese-market workflows, while COCO 291 is still used as a Chinese small-bead code system. Bitbead ships all of these palettes. Pick the code system your supplies or seller uses, and the generator only recommends colours from that palette.
What you need
Beyond the beads themselves: a pegboard (the plastic peg grid that holds beads while you work), parchment or ironing paper (so the iron doesn't touch the plastic directly), a regular household iron, and tweezers if you want a clean working speed. Total start-up cost is usually under $20 — the cheapest pixel art hobby in the world.