Making the most of the LinkedIn banner
The background photo is prime space on your profile: it is one of the first things a recruiter or potential client sees. A well-chosen banner can communicate your field, your company’s brand or simply a professional atmosphere. Because the space is very wide, at 4:1, most photos need to be cropped to a narrow horizontal band, and the profile picture overlaps part of it, so planning the layout matters.
Layout guidance
- Avoid the profile photo zone. On desktop, your round profile picture overlaps the lower-left of the banner. On the mobile app it overlaps the lower centre.
- Put text on the right. Taglines, contact details or a website URL are most readable in the right half, vertically centred.
- Test on mobile. The banner is scaled down on phones, so very small text becomes unreadable.
Choosing an image
Wide photographs work best: cityscapes, workspaces, landscapes, abstract textures or a team photo taken from a distance. Close-up portraits do not survive a 4:1 crop well. For a branded look, use “Fit and pad” with a solid brand colour and a logo or wordmark; the padding becomes part of the design.
How it works
The image is decoded in your browser in a background Web Worker and rotated according to its EXIF orientation. With “Crop to fill”, the central 4:1 region is selected; with “Fit and pad”, the whole image is scaled to fit and centred on your background colour. It is then resampled with Lanczos3 to exactly 1584 × 396 pixels and encoded. Nothing is uploaded.
Other professional banners
The same image can often be adapted for other platforms: an X header at 1500 × 500, a Facebook cover, or a YouTube channel banner, all available in the social media image resizer. For a matching profile picture, see 400 × 400.