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Style Reference codes, or SREF codes, are transforming the way we use Midjourney to create art. In this in-depth guide, we explore Midjourney’s game-changing innovation—simple numeric codes that, when added to your prompt, evoke unique visual styles and elevate your results to a whole new level.
SREF Codes In a Nutshell
SREF codes is a precise, reusable, and easily accessible method for controlling the visual style of your Midjourney generations.
In short, SREFs are numeric identifiers that represent specific aesthetics within Midjourney. By adding an SREF code to your prompt, you instruct Midjourney to apply a predefined style to the output image.
Let's see how different SREF codes dramatically transform the outcome from the same prompt.
ⓘ As in all Midlibrary Guides, you can click on any prompt and parameter—both in galleries and in text—to copy them to clipboard for use in your own prompts.
Essentially, these codes act as shortcuts to otherwise intricate and detailed style descriptions. This allows you to focus on the core of your prompt without meticulously specifying visual features such as artistic techniques, colors, textures, or lighting. Simply add --sref <numeric SREF code> to your prompt and watch the magic unfold..
SREF Codes vs. “Traditional” Styles
“Traditional” Midjourney styles—or Artistic Styles—are keywords that guide the AI toward a specific set of visual features based on real-world prototypes.
These can include the names of artists, art genres, artistic movements, techniques, mediums, or even titles. Since its inception, Midlibrary’s mission has been to classify and document these styles, creating a visual catalog of the references that Midjourney “knows” and can consistently reproduce across various prompts.
Currently, the Midlibrary catalog features over 5,500 styles, organized into 15 categories. Each style is tagged with its key visual attributes and includes baseline prompt samples for every Midjourney version since V4.
To build this collection, the Midlibrary team tested over 14,000 names and titles from nearly every domain of visual art. The challenge, however, is that there are only a certain amount of names, and Midjourney recognizes only a limited number of them. In the early days, we could add hundreds of new styles each month. Today, however, new ones appear on our radar far less frequently, with only about a dozen being verified, sampled, and added to the catalog monthly.
Enter SREF codes!
Just like an artistic style, an SREF code directs Midjourney to a specific set of visual features that the AI will apply to your prompt.
These can include drawing or collage techniques, photography styles, color palettes, contrast levels, light and shadow ratios, compositions, layouts, and much more.
But unlike “traditional” styles, the number of possible SREF codes is virtually infinite! And, without a fixed real-world prototype, each SREF code is an entirely new and original aesthetics, an unexpected, unique mix of artistic elements—all that with consistently reproducible results.
Building The Library
After months of research, hundreds of hours of coding, prompting, categorizing, and analyzing—along with thousands of generated samples—Midlibrary officially released its own SREF codes catalog last month. As of early February 2025, this collection features 2,800+ hand-picked codes, available in 17 “flavors.” Each SREF is showcased with a gallery of samples generated using a fixed set of one baseline prompt...
...and 16 benchmark prompts. With it, you can easily see how each style performs across a wide range of visual art genres. We will discuss them later in this guide, but for now, here are some examples:
Hunting for SREFs
But how do SREF codes make it into Midlibrary catalog in the first place?
Meet --sref random, a parameter that, when added to your prompt, generates a random SREF code and applies it to your image.
In Midjourney's response, instead of --sref random, you will see --sref <number> in your prompt. Repeat this process a dozen times, and chances are you’ll discover an SREF that perfectly fits your artistic vision. Or, it will surprise you with an unexpected and inspiring result!
So, we repeated this process tens of thousands of times using the same baseline prompt—artwork—chosen for its broad ambiguity. While clearly “requesting” a work of art, it avoids specifics, like medium, genre, technique, or color palette. This way, we allowed each SREF to “reveal itself” fully.
The baseline prompt highlights the core essence of a style—whether it leans toward illustration or painting, architecture or portraiture, abstraction or photorealism, and so on.
After going through thousands of artworks, we selected only the most interesting and promising codes and generated 16 additional samples for each—using our benchmark prompts.
SREF Code Benchmark
The benchmark prompts are much more specific, each designed to test an SREF within a particular domain of visual art (and even Midjourney version). They also introduce additional details to evaluate how a style responds to more complex prompts.
And, this led us to re-thinking and re-designing the Midlibrary styles catalog from scratch.
Using SREF Codes Library
In the main catalog grid, each style is displayed with one variant of its baseline sample—artwork.
Hover over the sample, and you’ll see all four of its variants, showcasing the SREF code's range within a given prompt.
Click on the preview to reveal the SREF’s title—which, when clicked, will take you to the code’s dedicated page.
You’ll also see a link to copy the SREF numeric code, ready to be pasted directly into your prompt.
Finally, you can switch to any of the 16 benchmark prompts—the grid will follow, showing samples generated with the selected prompt!
Pick Your Hero
Want to see how SREF codes perform in character design?
Pick concept art character design of a retropunk steam knight.
Looking for a cool style for magazine illustration?
Try editorial illustration for a popular scientific magazine cover.
Need photorealism for your project?
Check out photographic portrait of a female protagonist.
Fashion, graphic design, technical drawing—simply choose a prompt and compare styles side by side within that specific creative domain.
Finding A Perfect SREF
To help you navigate the 2,800+ SREF codes, the catalog offers two powerful tools: Search and Filters.
Looking for a horror film aesthetic, monochromatic collage, or retro film photography style? Just use Search!
Prefer a more structured approach? Try Filters—a set of 51 features covering artistic styles, techniques, color palettes, and other key aspects of a Midjourney style. Clicking a feature button will refine the grid, showing only the SREF codes that match your selection. You can also combine multiple features to gradually narrow down your exploration and find the perfect match.
To open the Filters panel, simply click the Filters button, or use Shift+F shortcut on your keyboard.
Wenever a filter is activated, you will see a red dot on the filters icon. This means that the catalog is filtered out. You can reset filtering with the Reset filters button, or using Shift+R shortcut.
SREF Code In-depth
Now that you’ve found your perfect SREF code, the best way to fully understand its potential is by visiting its dedicated page. There, alongside the click-to-copy numeric code, you’ll find the benchmark gallery—all 16 samples of this particular style displayed side by side.
Click any sample to view its four variants in lightbox mode. And from there, you can navigate through different prompts using the side arrows or your left and right arrow keys.
Applying Your SREF Code
Now that you’ve found your perfect SREF, applying it is simple: just paste the copied snippet after the text part of your prompt, and you’re all set!
Easy! And if you want to fine-tune the results...
Style Weight: --sw
...you can adjust the intensity of the style’s influence on your prompt. For that, use --sw, or Style Weight, parameter, which accepts a value between 0 and 1000 (with 100 as the default).
Lower values (below 100) gradually dilute the SREF’s presence, allowing more room for the prompt’s details.
And higher values (above 100) increase the influence of the SREF, making its visual characteristics more dominant. Note, that extremely high values may overpower the prompt, prioritizing the SREF’s core visual features over the original input.
From our experiments, the “sweet spot” is usually between 65 and 175. But don't let that stop you from experimenting with lower or higher values (and even going extreme!),
Infinity & Beyond
Welcome to one of the most incredible aspects of the Midjourney SREF codes—blending styles!
Yes, you can combine SREF codes to create an infinite number of unique aesthetics, crafting your own secret mix of favorite styles. And it’s super easy: Just place two (or more) codes after --sref, separated by a space.
Balancing SREF Codes
By default, all blended styles influence the result equally. However, if you want to prioritize one style over another, you can assign weights to each SREF code in your blend.
To assign different weights to SREF codes, use the following format: --sref <code 1>::<weight> <code 2>::<weight>
Weights can be any number—only the proportions between those numbers matter—allowing you to control how much influence each SREF has relative to other styles.
E.g.,: --sref <code 1>::2 <code 2>::1 and --sref <code 1>::100 <code 2>::50 will both produce the same effect—<code 1> will appear twice as prominently as <code 2> in the final image.
Ultimately, experimenting with different weights allows you to tune your blends to create even more personalized styles.
Referencing Existing Images
When discussing Midjourney’s style reference capabilities, it’s impossible not to mention another powerful feature—image-based style referencing.
Instead of using an SREF code, you can input the publicly accessible URL of an image (or multiple images, separated by spaces) after --sref. Midjourney will then attempt to transfer the visual style of that image to your prompt.
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For a deeper dive into this feature, check out our in-depth guide: Midjourney Style Reference for Photographers→
And guess what? You can combine an existing image with SREF codes—just like blending multiple SREFs!
Simply place the image URL alongside the SREF code(s) after --sref, and Midjourney will merge the visual characteristics of both.
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Further Exploration
On top of everything, SREF codes work seamlessly with some of the Midjourney’s most important parameters. Just like with “traditional” prompts, you can use: --stylize, --chaos, --weird, --no, and --stop to bring the results closer to your vision.
And, you can also apply SREF codes to image prompts, unlocking even more creative possibilities!
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We’ll be covering more advanced techniques in upcoming guides! Stay tuned:
Conclusion
SREF codes are more than just a technical feature—they mark a paradigm shift in how artists using Midjourney, can create, refine, and elevate their work by developing personalized, original visual styles.
And at Midlibrary, we are committed to continuously expanding our SREF codes catalog—adding new styles, enhancing categorization and tagging algorithms, and refining our AI-powered search to make discovering the perfect SREF easier than ever.
Happy midjourneys,
— Andrei
P.S. Our team is currently working on updating the Personal Libraries functionality to allow for saving your favorites—both “traditional“ artistic styles and SREF codes—and organize them into Collections. Coming this month!
Support Midlibrary
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Unless noted otherwise, all images on this website are created by the Midlibrary team using Midjourney AI and are not representative of real artists' works or real-world prototypes of the Midjourney styles used. Please respect the copyright—kindly ask us before re-using any materials published on Midlibrary.io.
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