LinkedIn Profile Photo and Banner: Sizes and What Works

The specifications

Those figures are LinkedIn's own, from its help pages on profile photo uploads and background photos. Two consequences are worth pulling out. The profile photo is displayed as a circle, so anything important near the corners of a square image will be cut. And the banner is cropped differently depending on the device, with a chunk of the lower left obscured by your profile photo on desktop — so text placed centrally or on the right survives, and text placed low and left generally does not.

What a good profile photo actually needs

Considerably less than the industry around it suggests. The purpose is narrow: to confirm that a real, current, professionally engaged person is behind the profile. A photograph that achieves that is a good photograph, whatever it cost.

• Recent — within a couple of years, and recognisably you as you would arrive at an interview.
• Head and shoulders, with your face taking up most of the frame rather than a distant figure.
• Well lit, ideally by daylight from in front of you. Facing a window beats any amount of equipment.
• A plain or uncluttered background. A wall, a doorway, an out-of-focus room.
• Dressed as you would be for an interview in your industry, which differs enormously between a hospital and a design studio.
• Looking at the camera, with an expression you would be comfortable meeting someone in.
• Cropped so nothing important sits in the corners, since the display is circular.

And what it does not need: a photographer, a suit if you work somewhere nobody wears one, or a neutral grey studio backdrop. A phone camera on a bright day, held at eye level by a colleague, produces a perfectly good result. The important variables are light and framing, and both are free.

What to avoid

The failures are consistent and easy to fix. A group photograph where the reader has to guess which person you are. A photograph so old it is a different haircut and a different decade. A holiday picture with sunglasses. A logo where a face should be, on a personal profile. A heavy filter. A photograph so low-resolution it goes soft at profile size. And a completely blank avatar, which does not read as principled privacy so much as an abandoned account.

The banner, which is free space

The default background is a plain gradient that tells the reader you have not been into the settings. Replacing it is a small signal that you maintain the profile, and it is the one piece of genuinely free real estate you have — a wide strip at the top of the page, visible before anything else, that nobody is competing with you for.

What it should not be is a busy collage or a wall of small text, because it is cropped differently on every device and read for about half a second. One idea, large enough to survive scaling.

• A photograph of your work. The strongest option where the work is visual: a build, a site, a dish, a garment, an installation, a workshop.
• A plain colour with one line of text. Understated, always legible, and it puts your specialism above your headline. Keep the text right of centre.
• A relevant place. A ward, a plant floor, a lecture theatre, a workshop bench. Context, without saying anything.
• Your employer's brand banner. Many companies publish one for staff, which is safe and slightly anonymous. Fine while employed, worth replacing when you are looking.
• Nothing but a colour. Entirely acceptable. A plain, deliberate colour reads far better than a default gradient or a badly cropped photograph.

The question about photographs and bias

It comes up, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a reassurance. A photograph reveals characteristics — age, race, sex, and sometimes disability or religion — that in the US employers are prohibited from basing hiring decisions on, under the rules the EEOC administers. That prohibition governs the employer's conduct. It does not make bias impossible, and nobody honest claims otherwise.

The practical position is nonetheless clear. LinkedIn is not an anonymous application channel and was never designed as one: your name, your work history and your education are all on the page, and a missing photograph does not make the profile anonymous — it makes it look inactive. If you are uncomfortable with a photograph, the reasonable response is a neutral, plain, professional one rather than none.

The resume is a different matter. US and UK resumes do not carry a photograph, and adding one there is a genuine mistake rather than a stylistic choice — some employers discard photographed resumes as a compliance measure. The CV versus resume guide covers where that convention does and does not apply, since parts of continental Europe still expect one.

Consistency across your professional presence

Use the same photograph across the professional places you appear — LinkedIn, a professional body listing, a conference programme, your email avatar. Recognition is the entire point of a profile picture, and three different photographs across three sites quietly undermine it. It also matters at the practical end: an interviewer who has looked at your profile should recognise you in reception.

Fifteen minutes, start to finish

1. 1
   Take the photograph

   Stand facing a window in daylight, have someone take four or five at eye level from about a metre and a half away, and pick the one where you look like yourself.

2. 2
   Crop it square

   Face filling most of the frame, a little space above the head, nothing important near the corners — the display crop is circular.

3. 3
   Build or choose a banner

   At 1584 by 396, with any text right of centre and clear of the lower left where your photo sits on desktop.

4. 4
   Upload and check on a phone

   The mobile crop differs from desktop. Look at your own profile in the app before deciding you are finished.

5. 5
   Check the rest of the top of the profile

   The images buy you a second of attention and the headline spends it. Make sure the two are working together.

Once the images are done, the text is what does the remaining work. The headline guide and the About section guide cover the two fields directly beneath them, and the profile audit scores the text you paste in. If the resume is next on the list, the template gallery and the builder handle the document side — and no, none of those templates has a photograph slot for US and UK applications, deliberately.