Pin design that earns the click
Sizes, text overlays, and image choices that decide whether anyone stops scrolling.
- Always 2:3, ideally 1000 × 1500 pixels
- Design for a thumbnail on a phone, not a full screen
- Product shots get clicks, lifestyle shots get saves
- A new pin needs a genuinely different image, not a new caption
A pin lives or dies at thumbnail size, in a crowded grid, on a phone. Everything in this article follows from that one fact.
The right size
Make pins 1000 × 1500 pixels, a 2:3 ratio. That's Pinterest's own recommendation, and it's the tallest shape that shows in full in the feed. Taller pins get cropped (and crops eat your product or your headline), square pins waste half the vertical space and get out-muscled by their neighbors. Keep files under 20 MB; in practice, aim well under 1 MB, since Pinterest recompresses anyway.
Design for thumbnails
Around 80% of Pinterest browsing happens on phones. Before you publish anything, zoom your design out to the size of a stamp and ask: can I tell what this is? If the product isn't identifiable or the headline isn't readable at that size, the pin doesn't exist. Two more habits that pay off:
- Put the most important content in the top part of the image; that's what gets judged in the feed.
- Keep a consistent palette across your pins. It helps your content cluster together in related-pin suggestions, next to your own winners.
Text overlay: when it helps and when it hurts
Text on the image is a tool, not a requirement.
Selling products? A clean, beautiful product photo usually doesn't need text; the image is the pitch, and words just cover it. Add text only when it says something the photo can't: dimensions ("Fits a 60 cm alcove"), material, a real offer. Never put the price on the image; it goes stale and creates a mismatch with your page.
Driving readers to articles? The overlay does most of the work. Nobody clicks an article pin because the photo is pretty; they click because the headline promised something. Rules of thumb:
- 4 to 8 words. Past that it turns into a gray smudge at feed size.
- Make the text bigger than feels tasteful, then bigger again. Underset text is the most common amateur mistake.
- High contrast, at most two fonts, and a solid block or dark scrim behind text that sits on a busy photo.
- Add your site name small at the bottom, so people who love the pin can find you again.
Product shots vs. lifestyle scenes
For shops, this is the central design trade-off, and both sides are right:
- Clean product shots (product on a simple background) get more outbound clicks, from people who already know what they want.
- Lifestyle scenes (product in a styled room, outfit, or table setting) get more saves and wider reach, from people gathering ideas.
Don't pick one. Sequence them: product-heavy while you need revenue (roughly 60/40 for a new shop), more lifestyle once you're established and want reach. A hybrid often beats both: the product clearly the hero, with just a hint of context behind it.
What counts as a genuinely new image
Since every fresh pin needs an image Pinterest hasn't seen, you'll be making variations, and it matters what counts. A safe rule: change at least two big things between versions, from this list: background, crop or composition, angle, color treatment, text present or absent, single image versus collage. Changing only the text on the same background is the classic near-duplicate, and Pinterest's image matching will treat it as one.
Real sources of variation for one product: a clean background shot, an in-context scene, a detail close-up, something showing scale, a flat-lay with related items, a seasonal restyle, or a multi-image collage (collages consistently do well for shops, because they give the eye more to stop on). For articles, variation mostly means a different photo or layout plus a different headline angle; see One article, many pins.
A quick word on video
Video pins reliably earn more impressions but fewer outbound clicks; viewers are in watch mode, not click mode. They're worth the effort when the product genuinely moves or transforms, or when you already have the footage from another platform. They're not worth building from scratch just for Pinterest; a great still does the job in a tenth of the time. If you do use video: 6 to 15 seconds, it must work with the sound off, and the subject should be visible in the first 2 seconds.