Facebook banner size

Facebook’s own name for it is the cover photo. Design apps and templates often call it a banner or a header, so all three searches lead to the same 851 × 315 file. It runs across the top of personal profiles and Pages alike. Meta’s size figures are written for Pages, its article on personal profile covers asks only for a width of at least 720 pixels, and the main guides give one size for both.

Groups have a banner too, and it has its own guide. Don’t assume a file made for a profile will drop into a group or an event unchanged.

Meta describes the banner at 16:9 on computers and 2.4:1 on phones. Both shapes are narrower than the 2.7:1 file, so neither screen shows all of it. Keeping the full height of an 851 × 315 file, a 16:9 view has room for about 560 pixels of its width and a 2.4:1 view for about 756. Plan for that loss from the start instead of rescuing the design afterwards.

1. Background: fill all 851 × 315 pixels with colour, texture or a photo whose edges can go without losing the point.
2. Message: keep the words, logo or product together in a block no wider than about 560 pixels, near the middle, so it fits the narrowest view Meta describes.
3. Keep-clear strip: leave the bottom edge free of anything important. Meta says the profile picture overlaps the banner by about 40 pixels on mobile.

Tip: While you design, draw a 560-pixel-wide guide box in the middle of the canvas and keep every word inside it. Delete the box before you export.

Phones are where banner text fails. The banner runs the width of the screen, and at Meta’s 2.4:1 phone shape about 756 of the file’s 851 pixels are in view. On a phone around 390 points wide, a common size, the design is shown at roughly half scale, so lettering 24 pixels tall in the file appears about 12 points tall: smaller than Facebook’s own body text.

These figures assume the phone shows the banner’s full height and trims only the sides. Treat them as a floor. A heavier weight and strong contrast with the background do more for legibility than any extra words.

1. Export at 851 × 315. Meta says a banner that size loads fastest as an sRGB JPG under 100 KB.
2. Switch to PNG when the banner is mostly words or a logo, which Meta says may give a better result.
3. After uploading, drag the image to reposition it, and save only when the message sits where you want it.
4. Check the saved banner on a phone and on a computer, since each shows a different slice.

Treat 100 KB as a target for speed, not a rule: Meta’s help centre presents it as the size that loads fastest. A detailed photo may need heavy JPG compression to get that small, so compare it with a slightly larger file and keep whichever looks cleaner.

Your Page name already appears right below the banner, so there is no need to repeat it. Use the space for the one thing a visitor should know right now: what you sell, the current offer, a launch date or this season’s opening hours.

• One message per banner. A second message belongs in a post.
• Three to six large words. A full sentence will not read on a phone.
• No small print. Conditions, full addresses and web addresses are hard to read at banner size, and text in an image can’t be clicked.
• Change it when the offer ends. An expired date is the first thing returning visitors see.
• Match the colours and logo to your profile picture, which sits over the banner’s lower edge.