Sharing images on Facebook is one of the best ways to capture and hold the attention of your target audience. But how do you make sure that the images you are sharing have the proper dimensions, or aspect ratios?
Most businesses fail to optimize this most-basic of features. A great image—or group of images, as we show below—can literally stop someone in their tracks.
But what kinds of images should you be sharing? Hint: they should nearly always include some combination of imagery and words. We’ll cover those specifics in a future post.
Before you can design the proper images for your posts, you need to have a basic understanding of the canvas where your images will live, i.e., how they will appear to users in their feeds. That’s what we cover here.
What Are the Recommended Image Sizes for Facebook?
One thing to note about the image sizes presented below: These are the recommended sizes for the various images Facebook supports: landscape, portrait, and square.
It’s always best to create images at these larger recommended sizes, as they will look better when Facebook scales them down for presentation in user feeds. Specifically, Facebook scales landscape images down at a 1-to-1 ratio to a maximum 470 pixels wide in the news feed and 504 pixels wide on your page.
Read on to learn more about the right size and dimensions of Facebook images you should be posting.
Landscape Image Facebook Post
Facebook recommends that landscape posts be uploaded at 1200 pixels wide by 630 pixels tall. The minimum size is 600 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall, with or without a link. Again, Facebook will scale these down to either 470 pixels or 504 pixels wide, depending on where it’s displayed.
1200 Pixels Wide by 630 Pixels Tall Image
Square Image Facebook Post
Square posts on Facebook take up more vertical space than landscape posts, which gives you an opportunity to do more.
While Facebook recommends 1200 pixels wide by 1200 pixels tall dimensions for square images, we usually upload 1080 by 1080 pixel dimension images. That is the maximum size allowed on Instagram, giving us one less image size to deal with, and there’s no discernible difference in image quality when it appears in the news feed.
1080 Pixels Wide by 1080 Pixels Tall Image
Portrait Image Facebook Posts
The two recommended portrait image post dimensions take up even more vertical space in a Facebook feed.
This extra vertical space in portrait images allows for more involved and interesting “infographic” style posts, which we’ll discuss in a future article.
The minimum recommended dimensions for portrait image posts is 500 pixels wide by 750 pixels tall, but we always recommend uploading the larger sizes shown below for the best image quality.
1080 Pixels Wide by 1350 Pixels Tall Image
1200 Pixels Wide by 1800 Pixels Tall Image
Facebook Posts With Multiple Images
When creating a post with multiple images on Facebook, you can post them all with the same dimensions, or with mixed dimensions. Depending on your choices, Facebook will display the multiple image post in a variety of ways.
The great thing about multiple image posts is that you can get quite a lot of engagement, which is appealing from both an algorithm and an audience attention point of view.
While multi-image posts take more effort, the payoff is often well worth the extra time.
Here are two examples of multiple image posts:
Multi-Image Post with All 1080 by 1080 Pixel Square Images
This post includes six 1080 by 1080 pixel square images. Notice how Facebook presents an “album” with two large images at the top of the post, three images in the second row, and “+2,” indicating that there is at least one other image hidden.
Multi-Image Post with a Mix of Images of Various Dimensions
This post also includes six images, but in this case, we chose one image from each of the recommended aspect ratios we discuss in this article.
Notice how the first image presented is the landscape image, but that the aspect ratio isn’t preserved—as can be seen by the logo that’s cut off.
Still, this is an interesting combination of shapes, with the square image next to the two portrait images.
People learn to ignore what they see over and over again, so by doing a combination of images that’s unexpected, you’ll stand out from 99% of the other posts a Facebook user will see in their feed.
Do Private Posts to Yourself to Test What Images Look Like
You may have noticed that we created all of these posts in TMM co-founder Angelika’s Facebook profile. Fortunately, we didn’t annoy her friends and followers because each of the posts is private.
If you have any doubts about how a particular post will look when it goes public on your business profile page, just make a private post by clicking on the dropdown menu just below your name and selecting the “Only me” option.
What’s The Takeaway?
Images are one of the best ways to grab the attention of your target audience on Facebook. In a future post, we’ll discuss the specifics of how those images should look, including the combination of image and words they should contain.
So for now, keep in mind:
- Facebook gives you a variety of aspect ratios and image dimensions to work with.
- Design and upload images at these larger recommended sizes for the best quality.
- Square and portrait images will take up more real estate in feeds than landscape images, giving you more impact.
- Multiple image posts or “image decks” can create even more engagement than single image posts.
- You can test how any post will look by adding a private post to your own profile page.
If you’re curious, take a look at Facebook’s official guidelines for Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger image dimensions.