A variety of 20+1 great wallpapers for Valentine’s Day

Now that Groundhog Day has passed that can only mean one thing: Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. It’s time to celebrate romance and love with festive (usually heart-filled) desktop wallpapers (see also this previous collection of ours).

Whether you do it for yourself or secretly install an adorable token of your affection on a loved one’s screen, the options are endless. Since it’s popularly began in the 17th century, Valentine’s Day has always had numerous icons that make for perfect design subjects.

It’s no wonder we are bombarded with holiday clichés. With the development of printing technology by the 1900s, ready-made cards were used as a simple way for people to express their emotions during a time when direct expressions of one’s feelings were frowned upon.

Although roses are absolutely beautiful, one of the reasons I personally never want them for Valentine’s Day is because they are so clichéd. Chocolate is pretty clichéd too, but surprisingly that’s never been an issue for me.

 

Designing your own Valentine’s wallpaper

If you design your desktop wallpaper this year try to get as creative as possible and avoid over-using common pictures and images. It can be so easy to fall into design traps that look better suited for the greeting card aisle of a drug store. Using a heart shape is fine of course but you can avoid this by picking a theme. Nature, animal companions, refurbished photos of classic love or humor are great springboards for creativity. In the examples below you will see that the more original themes stand out a lot better than the wallpapers with heart shapes.

Think of what love means to you and then follow your heart (…) to design something that is uniquely special to you.

If you have a companion, consider designing something that represents the love and friendship that you share.

Whether it’s a special activity that you like to do together or an over-arching concept of what the person means to you, maybe you will come up with something  more unique than a vase of roses and a teddy bear holding a heart-shaped box of chocolates.

For your inspiration we have listed a variety of wallpapers for Valentine’s Day below.

If you don’t like Valentine’s Day scroll to the bottom, there’s a special wallpaper for you!

 

Valentine’s Day wallpaper inspiration

By clicking on each of the images below, you will be taken to their source where you can download the wallpaper. For DeviantArt links, you can find the download button in the right column of DeviantArt.

 

We like the concept of this one a lot but remove the year if you’re going to use it.

 

And this one is for the Valentine’s Day haters!