How to Create a Memorial QR Code

To create a memorial QR code, ask the cemetery what it allows, gather photographs and video, write a short life story, build the memorial page with a provider, set who can see it, then order a plaque engraved with the code and fix it to the headstone with adhesive. Most families finish a first version in an evening.

Updated July 27, 2026 · Written and checked by the Lumestone team

Making a memorial QR code sounds technical and is not. There is no software to install, no code to generate yourself, and nothing to configure. The provider creates the code, links it to the page you build, and engraves it before the plaque ships.

What the job actually asks of you is different, and harder. It asks you to go through the photographs. That is the part that takes the evening, and it is the part worth doing carefully, because everything the plaque is for depends on what you put behind it.

The sequence below is the one that produces the least rework. Permission first, material second, page third, plaque last. Families who reverse it tend to end up with a plaque in a drawer waiting on a cemetery decision, or a page with four photographs on it because the ordering felt like the finish line.

Step 1: Ask the cemetery before you buy anything

Cemetery rulebooks almost never mention QR codes. The technology postdates most of the regulations. What nearly every set of rules does contain is a clause requiring prior written approval before anything is attached to, affixed to or placed on a monument, and a QR plaque sits squarely inside that clause.

Call the office rather than emailing, because a phone call gets an answer the same week. Say that you would like to attach a two-inch metal plaque to the lower corner of the monument using adhesive, that nothing will be drilled, and that it can be removed later without marking the stone. Ask whether they want it in writing, and write down who you spoke to and the date.

Lawn sections with flush markers are usually governed more tightly than sections with upright monuments, and church-owned or veterans' grounds run their own rules. If the answer is a refusal, there are alternatives that stay within the regulations, which our guide to cemetery rules for QR code headstones sets out. Where the headstone is decades old, adding a QR code to an existing headstone covers the surface questions specific to weathered granite.

Step 2: Gather the photographs, video and voice

Do this before you open any editor, and do it with other people. One person owns one archive. A brother has the pictures from the decade you missed, a cousin has the video from the wedding, and somebody always has a recording nobody knew existed.

Ask three relatives for their five favorite photographs and give them a deadline. Open-ended requests are never answered. A specific number and a date usually are.

Photograph paper prints with a phone rather than hunting for a scanner. Daylight near a window, no flash, held square above the print, is good enough and it takes seconds. Perfect is the enemy of finished here.

The voice recording is the one families consistently say they did not expect to matter. If nothing recorded survives, write down the phrases they always used instead. That does more than another photograph would.

Old camcorder tapes and 8mm reels are worth chasing early, because transferring them takes a fortnight and a specialist, and you do not want the project waiting on it. Set that going in the background and build the page without it. Video can be added at any point afterwards.

While you are asking relatives for pictures, ask them for one memory in writing as well. A single paragraph each. Some will send three lines and some will send a page, and both are useful. You will find that half of what people send you is material you had never heard, which is exactly the argument for not writing the memorial alone.

Step 3: Write the life story

Write for a great-grandchild who never met them. That single shift changes everything about the result, because it rules out the obituary reflexes: the list of surviving relatives, the funeral arrangements, the formal phrasing nobody speaks in.

Four or five paragraphs is enough. Where they were born and what the household was like. What they did with their working years, and how they felt about it. Who they loved and what that looked like day to day. The things they were known for, including the irritating ones, because those are what make a person recognizable.

Specifics beat adjectives every time. Not that she was generous, but that she kept a second freezer full of food for anyone who turned up. Not that he was funny, but the one joke he told at every wedding for thirty years. Nobody remembers a person through their virtues; they remember them through their habits.

If writing is hard, talk instead. Record yourself answering the question of what you would want a stranger to know, then type up what you said. It reads better than anything you would have composed. Our guide on what to put on a memorial page has a longer list of prompts if you need them.

Step 4: Build the memorial page

Upload the photographs first, because they anchor everything else and they are the least demanding part. Then paste in the life story, add the video, and set out a timeline of the moments that mattered: born, married, the move, the job, the grandchildren.

Do not try to finish in one sitting. A memorial page is not a form to be completed. Get it to a state you would be content for family to see, publish it, and add to it over the following months as more material surfaces.

Caption the photographs as you go, even briefly. A name, a year, a place. Twenty years from now the captions will be worth more than several of the pictures, because a face nobody can identify slowly stops being a person. This is the single most commonly regretted omission.

Order matters less than you think, with one exception: choose the opening photograph deliberately. It is the first thing anyone sees after scanning, and the instinct is to pick a formal portrait from late in life. A picture of them mid-laugh, at whatever age suited them best, sets a completely different tone for everything underneath it.

With Lumestone the page holds unlimited photos and videos with no storage limit, a life story, a life line for the timeline, their voice, their song, tributes, candles and a slideshow. It is ad-free, and we do not sell data. If you want to see a finished example before you begin, look at the memorial for Margaret Bennett.

Step 5: Set privacy and add family as managers

Decide who the page is for. A public memorial opens for anyone who scans the plaque, which is usually right for a grave that friends and distant relatives visit. A private memorial is visible only to people you invite, which suits difficult deaths, young children, or families who simply want the material kept close. On a good platform this is one setting and it can be changed later without replacing the plaque.

There is no wrong answer here, and the choice is reversible. Families sometimes start private while the page is half-built and open it up once it is finished, which is a sensible way to avoid relatives seeing a draft. Others keep it private permanently and simply send the link to the twenty people it was made for.

Then add two or three relatives as managers. This is the step most often skipped and the one that decides whether the memorial is still being tended in ten years. It also protects against the obvious problem: an account tied to one email address becomes unreachable when that address does. Put the login details wherever you keep the will.

Step 6: Order the plaque

Order once you know the page exists and the cemetery is content. Prices below were read from each company's own website on July 27, 2026, in US dollars, and they change.

Three things separate a plaque that lasts from one that does not: engraved metal rather than a printed label, adhesive supplied already applied rather than a tube of glue, and a written replacement guarantee. The Lumestone plaque is 5×5 cm engraved anodized metal with a champagne-brass rim and industrial 3M adhesive already on the back. It ships worldwide within 48 hours for a flat $4.90, whatever the quantity, linked to your page before it leaves, and carries a lifetime scan guarantee. The cost guide compares total spend across five, ten and twenty years.

Step 7: Fit it to the headstone

Pick a mild, dry day. Most industrial adhesives want a surface above roughly 10 C, or 50 F, and a January installation on cold granite is the most common reason a plaque comes loose.

1. Choose the spot. The lower right corner of an upright stone is conventional, clear of the inscription, and easy to reach.
2. Hold the plaque there with your thumb and scan it from where a visitor would stand. Check the mobile signal at the same time.
3. Brush off lichen and grit, wash with plain water, then wipe with rubbing alcohol and let it dry completely.
4. Peel the backing and press hard for thirty seconds, using your weight rather than your fingertips.
5. Leave it undisturbed for twenty-four hours so the bond reaches full strength.

Polished granite bonds better than rough-sawn or flamed finishes. On a heavily textured stone, a pad of exterior-grade construction adhesive or a mount fitted by the monument company is the safer route. The same plaque works on an urn, a bench or a keepsake at home, though curved surfaces need a smaller footprint.

Take a photograph of the finished plaque in place before you leave, with enough of the stone in frame to show where it sits. It is useful if the cemetery ever queries it, useful for a relative who wants to find it, and useful to you in three years when you are trying to remember which corner it went on.

Bring someone with you if you can. Fitting a plaque to a grave is a small task with an unexpectedly large amount of feeling attached, and people are frequently caught out by it. It is also easier with two pairs of hands.

Step 8: Share it and keep it alive

A plaque is scanned by people who visit the grave, and most of the family will not, most years. Email the memorial link as well, to everyone. That is what gets opened on birthdays and anniversaries and on ordinary evenings when somebody is thinking about them.

Invite tributes explicitly. People will not post unprompted, but they will answer a direct request to add one memory or one photograph. Those contributions are usually the material nobody in the immediate family had.

Then return to it. Add the photograph that surfaced at Christmas, the recording your aunt found, the new grandchild who carries their name. A memorial page is worth more in year ten than in year one, and that is the whole reason for putting a code on a stone rather than another line of engraving. If you want the wider background before you start, our guide to QR codes for headstones covers materials, permissions and providers, and the Lumestone plaque page shows exactly what arrives.

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