LinkedIn Background Photo: Size, Safe Zone and What to Put on It

What LinkedIn publishes about the size, and what it leaves out

LinkedIn's help page for personal profiles says the cover image appears behind your profile photo in the introduction section. The editor lets you crop and reposition the picture, but the page names no pixel dimensions for a personal profile (read on 23 October 2026). The only size table LinkedIn publishes covers Pages, meaning company and career pages.

The 1584 x 396 pixel figure you see everywhere therefore comes from design tools such as Figma and Snappa. Both give the same number and the same 4:1 proportions. Treat it as a convention rather than a LinkedIn rule. For company Pages the guides disagree with each other, and the table shows where.

Our suggestion for a personal profile is 1584 x 396 pixels, or a larger file with the same 4:1 ratio so the crop editor has more to work with. For a company Page, use the figures from LinkedIn's own table.

LinkedIn's gallery of ready-made cover images is available only to members in the USA, and the slideshow option needs a Premium plan.

Where your profile photo lands on the banner

On a personal profile your portrait sits over the lower-left part of the cover. Snappa notes that it hides a small area on desktop and a larger one on mobile. LinkedIn does not publish the covered area, and we found no primary source with pixel values for it, so this page does not invent any. A quick test works better.

1. Place your text, logo or main subject in the middle or on the right of the banner, away from the lower-left corner.
2. Upload the file and open your profile on a desktop browser.
3. Open the same profile on your phone, where the portrait covers more, and check that nothing sits behind the circle.
4. Use the crop and position controls in LinkedIn's editor to shift the image until both views work.

LinkedIn's own advice for Page covers is to keep key details away from the edges, because the image gets cropped on different screens. The logic holds for personal profiles too.

What the banner says about you, by profession

LinkedIn publishes no data on which banners recruiters notice, and the Reddit threads we read split on the question. The notes below are our own judgment, built from those threads. They are not measured results.

Job seekers and students

Use a plain background with your name and the role you want. A commenter in r/LinkedInTips told a law student to keep it simple with a clear message, and another said a picture of the school would be fine.

Consultants and freelancers

Put one sentence on the right side of the banner that says whom you help and with what. The sentence does the job a tagline does elsewhere, and it stays clear of your portrait.

Visual creators and filmmakers

The banner is the one place where your work appears without a click. Use one strong image of your own work. Film people can also read our guide to filmmaker headshots for the photo that goes next to it.

Sales and founders

Show your logo and a one-line offer in your brand colors. If a customer lands on your profile from a message, the banner confirms that you are the person behind the product.

Law, accounting and finance

Keep it restrained with a muted solid color or a calm texture. One commenter called skyline banners tacky and another called them overdone, so the usual city picture says little in a conservative field.

Healthcare and education

Choose a calm image of your practice or campus, or a plain color. Keep patients and pupils out of the frame, because they did not agree to appear on your profile.

Engineers and recruiters

Engineers can show a diagram or a screenshot of a project they built. Recruiters can show the employer brand and the roles that are open. Keep any text large enough to read on a phone.

Mistakes people ask about

• Leaving the default gray. A commenter in r/linkedin advised against it and suggested a stock image loosely tied to your industry instead.
• Using a city skyline because everyone does. Two commenters in a thread by a law student in London found it generic, and one suggested an unusual angle if you insist.
• Uploading a soft or crooked file. One commenter said such flaws matter more than the subject, because even a good topic looks poor when the picture is blurry.
• Putting text in the lower-left corner, where your portrait will cover it.
• Trusting an AI-generated banner without reading it. In one r/linkedin thread a commenter misread the garbled lettering of an AI banner as an insult, so check every letter before you upload.

Making the banner and the portrait agree

Profilfoto KI creates portraits, not banners. You upload your own selfies, choose a style such as business or LinkedIn, and receive a photorealistic portrait without a studio appointment. The portrait goes in the circle, and the banner remains your own job.

The order of work helps. Make the portrait first, then pick the banner color from the portrait, for example the blue of a blazer or the tone of the backdrop. A portrait in a dark green jacket sits well on a calm neutral or green banner and looks restless on a bright orange one. Our pages on headshot backgrounds and AI photos for LinkedIn cover the portrait side, including how LinkedIn crops it.

The first photo is free and carries a watermark, so you can check the likeness before you pay. Packages are one-time payments, not a subscription: 2 photos for €4.99, 12 photos for €29 and 40 photos for €79. Uploaded selfies are stored in Frankfurt and deleted automatically after 90 days at the latest.