Pinterest Image Size Guide

Pinterest image dimensions at a glance

Pinterest is a visual platform where image proportions directly affect how much screen real estate your content occupies. Unlike square-grid platforms that enforce a fixed aspect ratio, Pinterest uses a masonry layout: Pins display at a fixed width and expand vertically to match the image height. That means a taller image takes up more visual space and attracts more attention in the feed. The 2:3 ratio at 1000 × 1500 px has become the de facto standard because it balances vertical presence against the platform's own feed truncation rules.

The 2:3 ratio is not arbitrary. Pinterest's feed column width is fixed, and the masonry layout renders each Pin at that width while preserving the original aspect ratio. A 2:3 Pin at 1000 × 1500 px occupies roughly 50 % more vertical space than a 1:1 square Pin of the same width. That extra height is visible space your content occupies before a viewer scrolls past. For recipe photography, fashion imagery, and infographics, this vertical advantage translates into measurably higher impression counts compared to the same image uploaded at a 1:1 or landscape ratio.

The 2:3 ratio: why it matters and what happens when you exceed it

Pinterest enforces a maximum display height in the feed. Pins taller than a 1:2.1 ratio — that is, more than 2.1 times taller than they are wide — are truncated in the feed preview. A 1000 × 2200 px image, for example, displays only the top 2100 px in the feed card. The full image is still accessible when a viewer clicks through to the expanded Pin view, but the cropped feed card hides content below the fold.

This truncation creates a practical problem for infographics and recipe step-by-step images that pack a large amount of content into a tall canvas. If a viewer sees only the top portion in the feed, the call-to-action, the title text, or the most compelling part of the image may be invisible. The 2:3 ratio at 1000 × 1500 px avoids the truncation entirely while still claiming the maximum useful vertical space in the feed.

For content that genuinely requires a taller format, such as a step-by-step infographic with eight steps, the standard approach is to split the content across two or three separate Pins at 2:3 each, rather than creating a single very tall Pin that gets truncated. Each Pin in the series links to the same destination URL; the series format also gives you multiple impressions in the feed instead of one truncated view.

How Pinterest compresses and resamples uploaded images

Every image uploaded to Pinterest passes through a compression pipeline that re-encodes the file at Pinterest's internal quality setting. The compression is lossy for JPEG files and applies regardless of whether you upload a JPEG or PNG. Pinterest converts PNG files to JPEG for photographic content as part of its serving infrastructure. This means that a carefully crafted PNG with no compression artefacts will still arrive at the viewer's screen as a JPEG after Pinterest's conversion.

The practical implication is that you cannot avoid the compression step; you can only control how much quality loss occurs. Starting from a high-quality source file at the target dimensions (1000 × 1500 px for a standard Pin) gives Pinterest's encoder a clean input. Starting from an oversized file (a 4000 × 6000 px DSLR original) forces Pinterest to both downsample and re-encode, which applies two quality-degrading operations in sequence. Resize and export at 1000 × 1500 px yourself before uploading, and you control the downsample step with a higher-quality algorithm than Pinterest's internal pipeline provides.

JPEG compression artefacts appear first in areas of smooth colour gradient: clear skies, skin tones, soft backgrounds. Flat graphics and high-contrast illustrations with clean edges tolerate Pinterest's compression better than photographs. For photographic Pins, export at 80–85 % JPEG quality from your editing tool. Quality above 85 % produces a larger file without visible improvement after Pinterest's second compression pass.

Board covers and the square crop

Pinterest displays board covers at a 1:1 square ratio everywhere — on the profile page, in board search results, and in the profile grid. When you set or change a board cover, Pinterest offers a drag tool to position the crop centre within the image. This positioning step is the only control you have over how a non-square image is cropped.

The most reliable approach is to design board covers as squares from the start. A 600 × 600 px canvas gives you a 1:1 image that requires no cropping at all. On Retina and high-DPI screens, the board cover renders at 330 × 330 physical pixels at standard layout density; uploading at 600 × 600 px covers that density with headroom. Uploading at the 165 × 165 px minimum produces a noticeably soft cover on any modern screen.

Board covers that mix portrait photography with a consistent background colour or brand overlay tend to look more cohesive in the grid than covers cropped from random Pins within the board. If you manage multiple boards, creating a consistent template at 600 × 600 px with a fixed background colour and the board category label gives the profile a polished appearance across all boards without requiring per-board custom photography.

Story Pins: full-screen vertical format and safe zones

Story Pins (now part of Pinterest's Idea Pin format) use a 9:16 vertical ratio at 1080 × 1920 px, matching the full-screen story format used across most social platforms. The full canvas fills the screen in Pinterest's story viewer on mobile. On desktop, the story viewer displays at a narrower width with the image centred.

Story Pins have interface elements overlaid on the image: the creator's profile picture and username appear in the top portion of the frame, and action buttons and navigation indicators appear near the bottom. The safe zone for visual content is approximately the central 80 % of both height and width — meaning roughly 100 px of clearance on each side and about 190 px clearance at the top and bottom. Text, logos, or any content placed outside this safe zone risks being covered by Pinterest's own interface elements.

For video Story Pins, Pinterest recommends H.264 encoding at 1080 × 1920 px. The maximum duration is 60 seconds per page, and a single Idea Pin can contain up to 20 pages. Resolution below 1080 × 1920 px is accepted but appears soft on modern phone screens.

Image metadata and privacy on Pinterest

Pinterest reads EXIF metadata at upload time. GPS coordinates embedded in photos taken on a phone are accessible in the uploaded file. While Pinterest does not visibly display GPS coordinates in the Pin interface, the data is present in the file as served. For photos taken at private locations — a home studio, a home kitchen, a private workspace — uploading without stripping location data means that location is attached to a publicly visible Pin.

Photographers, recipe bloggers, and home decorators are the groups most affected by this risk. A recipe photo taken in a home kitchen carries the home's GPS coordinates in its EXIF data by default. A DIY project photo taken in a home workshop similarly. Pinterest's terms of service do not guarantee that EXIF data is stripped before the image is served.

The cleanest mitigation is to run every photo through the metadata removal tool before uploading to Pinterest. The tool removes GPS coordinates, device serial numbers, and all other EXIF fields in one pass, running entirely in your browser without sending your file to any server. After removing metadata, use the image dimensions checker to confirm the pixel dimensions match your target before uploading.

Preparing images for Pinterest: a step-by-step workflow

Start with your source image at its full original resolution. Open it in your image editor of choice — Photoshop, Affinity Photo, GIMP, or the macOS Preview app all work for resizing. Create a new canvas at 1000 × 1500 px (or at whatever target dimensions you need from the table above). Place and scale your image to fill the canvas, taking care to keep the most important visual content away from the left and right edges on mobile, where screen width varies.

Add any text overlay, watermark, or branding at this stage in your editor rather than uploading a bare photo and adding text through Pinterest's built-in text tools. Pinterest's text tools are serviceable but they do not give you full control over typography, letter spacing, or kerning. Designing the full composition in your editor and exporting it as a flat JPEG produces a more polished result and avoids the text-encoding artefacts that Pinterest's compression introduces when it encodes text rendered over a gradient background.

Export the finished image as JPEG at 80–85 % quality. At 1000 × 1500 px and 85 % quality, a typical food or fashion photograph produces a file between 200 and 400 KB — well within Pinterest's 20 MB limit but small enough for fast page loads. Before uploading, use the image dimensions checker to confirm the dimensions are exactly right, and the metadata removal tool to strip EXIF data. Both tools process your file locally in the browser without sending it anywhere.

Common Pinterest image mistakes

Using a landscape or wide image is the most common mistake. A 1200 × 628 px image (the standard Facebook and LinkedIn post size) uploaded to Pinterest occupies less than half the vertical space of a 2:3 Pin at the same feed width. It appears small and gets visually dominated by adjacent tall Pins. Pinterest's own creator analytics consistently show 2:3 vertical images outperforming 1:1 and 16:9 images on impression and save rates, which is why the 2:3 ratio has become the platform-wide standard.

Uploading very tall images expecting full display is the second common mistake. As noted above, Pins taller than 1:2.1 are truncated in the feed. A 1000 × 3000 px infographic uploads without error but shows only the top 2100 px in the feed card. If the bottom section of the infographic contains the call-to-action or URL, it is hidden from viewers who do not click through. Design to 2:3 or split the infographic across multiple Pins.

Ignoring text readability on small screens is the third mistake. Pinterest's mobile app displays Pins at a width of roughly 170 px on a standard iPhone screen in a two-column layout. Text smaller than 24 px at 1000 px canvas width becomes unreadable at that display size. Any text overlay on a Pin should be large enough to read at the thumbnail scale, not just at the full-size view.

Finally: uploading images with watermarks placed over key visual content. A watermark in the corner is fine. A watermark spanning the centre of the image blocks the primary subject. Pinterest viewers who see a Pin with a large centred watermark tend to keep scrolling rather than clicking. Place watermarks consistently in a corner or along a non-distracting edge.

Pinterest image sizes compared to other platforms

Pinterest's 2:3 standard Pin ratio differs from every other major social platform. Instagram uses 4:5 (1080 × 1350 px) as its preferred vertical feed ratio; Facebook defaults to 1.91:1 landscape for link previews; LinkedIn posts are 1.91:1; X/Twitter recommends 16:9. None of these ratios is interchangeable with Pinterest's 2:3. A single image exported at one platform's recommended dimensions will be cropped, letterboxed, or displayed at a suboptimal ratio on every other platform.

The most efficient workflow for multi-platform content is to create the Pinterest version first at 1000 × 1500 px, since it is the tallest and contains the most design area. Then create the Instagram 4:5 version (1080 × 1350 px) as a separate crop of the same scene. Finally, create a landscape version for Facebook, LinkedIn, and X/Twitter. Starting from the tallest format and cropping down is easier than starting from a landscape image and trying to extend the canvas to a 2:3 portrait.