Last updated: January 13, 2025
Have you explored the AncestryDNA chromosome painter? This exciting new interactive feature, companion to their Ethnicity Inheritance feature and similarly fueled by AncestryDNA’s SideView™ technology, assigns your DNA ethnicity estimates from each parent to specific chromosomes.
In 2022, AncestryDNA launched a chromosome painter! The company says it “‘shows your ancestral regions ‘painted’ on your chromosomes so you can see where in your DNA we found them and which parent they came from.”
You should note that you’ll need an AncestryDNA Plus or Ancestry family history membership to access AncestryDNA’s chromosome painter. Haven’t tested at Ancestry yet? Watch our AncestryDNA review to see if it’s a good choice for you.
How to use AncestryDNA chromosome painter
To see the AncestryDNA chromosome painter, log in to your AncestryDNA account. Go to DNA > Origins > By parent. You’ll see three ways you can view your origins by parent. Click on Chromosome painter.
Options in AncestryDNA to view DNA Origins by parent, from left to right: ancestral regions by parent, ancestral journeys by parent, and chromosome painter
The AncestryDNA chromosome painter shows a display of 22 of your chromosomes. Your sex chromosomes, your 23rd pair, are not displayed on your chromosome painting at AncestryDNA. The colored bars on each chromosome show your DNA segments attributed to your Maternal and Paternal sides. It’s highly interactive, so click on everything!
You can see three views of the chromosome painting—All, Maternal, and Paternal.
AncestryDNA chromosome painter view
Choosing Paternal will highlight the top row of each chromosome. Choosing Maternal will highlight the bottom row of each chromosome. Think of all the possibilities in the future for Ancestry to use additional information in our DNA to tell us more!
You may notice that a small percentage of your results are labeled as “not tested” or “unassigned.” A few regions are not easy to “read,” so they aren’t tested for ethnicity. Also, your ethnicity results may include regions to which you’re assigned 0.5% or less. Ancestry can’t be confident those regions should really be part of your results, so any chromosomes that contribute to those regions are labeled “unassigned.”
On the left side, you can choose an ethnicity to view where that particular estimate shows up in your chromosomes and whether it comes from one parent, the other parent, or both.
If I select Germanic Europe, I can see where only one parent, or both parents, is contributing ethnicity from Germanic Europe to my genome. It’s possible to choose two or more ethnicities to analyze.
Like everything to do with DNA ethnicity estimates, your results in the AncestryDNA chromosome painter are subject to change. Ancestry says, “When we release updates, it’s possible that your chromosome painter results will evolve along with our understanding of DNA science. With each ethnicity update, you may notice more changes in your chromosome painter than you do in your ethnicity estimate. This is because the chromosome painter gives you a close-up view of your chromosomes, so changes are more noticeable.”
Compare chromosome paintings with your DNA matches
Only you can see your chromosome painting, unless you share it with others and anyone you’ve assigned as a manager on your results. DO share and compare with the matches you communicate with! It can be interesting and even informative (especially as this tool evolves) to see where you share the same ethnicity estimates with your DNA matches. Being able to identify which parent is a single contributor to those segments of yours, and which parent is a single contributor to the segments of theirs may give you hints to help you find your most recent common ancestor.
That said, offering to compare chromosome paintings isn’t necessarily the best way to START a conversation with a DNA match. Get our free guide with tips on communicating more successfully with your matches!
Specify whether parent one is biological father and parent to his biological mother. Or something else!
Right now Ancestry doens’t have a way to specify which parent is which with their technology. But we’re hopeful that will come soon!
I was wondering how much of a single chromosome would be highlighted if, let’s say, you had a great grandparent that was about 100% Irish?
That’s specific, but generally how can I use this painting feature to help better determine the genetic makeups of my ancestors?
I am lucky enough to have both of my grandmothers in the system, but they are still so mixed that I am still lost when I look at their chromosomes.
Since genetic inheritance is a somewhat random process the regions that someone inherits from each parent/ grandparent will vary by person. From what you’ve described, I would recommend checking out some of these chromosome mapping tools (https://www.yourdnaguide.com/chromosome-mapping), they can tell you more about what region you’ve inherited from different ancestors.
I know that I have 1% Congo etc. from my mother. It shows up on my chromosome painter on line 3 and also farther down on line 13. Will you explain what the line numbers mean? Like how far back would line 3 go, ggg grandfather? Years?
On the chromosome painters, line 3 and 13 are chromosomes 3 and 13. If you have an estimate of 1% Congo, it’s likely a 5th or 6th great-grandparent (assuming that ethnicity only came from one ancestral line).
You show chromosomes 1-22. Do we know what each chromosome represents?
Hi Leasa – Chromosomes 1-22 are your autosomal chromosomes. Each one has thousands of genes that control different things in our bodies.
Chromosome 1 on my maternal side is complete from Spain what does that mean?
Hi Rebecca – Ancestry has compared your DNA to its reference populations from Spain and is hypothesizing that the DNA you inherited from your mom on Chromosome 1 is from an ancestor who lived in Spain hundreds of years ago.
So not necessarily from a recent ancestor? Does each chromosome number correspond to anything particular? I was given 4% Spain with chromosome 1 all Spain dna with nothing else mixed in. Also is there a way to pinpoint what region my 1% Levant dna is from? I also have 16% southern Italian from Calabria / Cosenza