Pin Sizes Explained: 2:3, 9:16 and 3:4

The short answer

Use 2:3 at 1000 × 1500 px for standard pins, 9:16 at 1080 × 1920 px for Idea Pins and Story placements, and 3:4 at 1000 × 1333 px when you need a shorter crop for feeds or ads.

That is the whole spec. Everything below is about why those numbers exist and when breaking them is a good idea.

Why 2:3 is the default

Pinterest's feed allocates vertical space generously, and 2:3 fills it without being cropped. It is also the ratio the platform's own documentation recommends, which means it is the safest choice for anything you want distributed broadly.

At 1000 × 1500 px you have enough resolution for retina displays and enough headroom to export at 2× for print-adjacent uses.

When to use 9:16

9:16 is the vertical video ratio, and it is what Idea Pins use. If you are publishing multi-page stories or short video, design at 1080 × 1920 px. The extra height gives you room for a hook at the top and a caption at the bottom.

For static pins, 9:16 works well on mobile-heavy accounts but gets cropped in some grid placements. Test it on one board before committing a whole campaign.

When to use 3:4

3:4 is the compromise ratio: taller than a square, shorter than a standard pin. It performs well in ads and in email embeds, where a 2:3 image can feel excessively tall.

It is also useful when your source photograph is portrait but not extremely tall — cropping a 3:4 photo to 2:3 often cuts the subject.

Safe zones

Pinterest overlays UI on top of your image in several surfaces. Keep critical text away from:

• The bottom 12% — action buttons and titles can sit here.
• The bottom-right corner — the save/share cluster.
• The top 8% — profile chips on some placements.

PinPower applies these margins automatically on every template.

Resolution and file size

Export at 1000 px wide minimum, 1500 px for 2:3. Keep files under 10 MB; Pinterest compresses uploads, so an oversized PNG gains nothing. WebP is accepted and produces smaller files, but PNG is safer for text-heavy designs because it avoids compression artefacts around letterforms.

Text size at each ratio

The rules scale with the canvas, not with the ratio:

• Headline: 9–15% of canvas width
• Subline: 3.5–5% of canvas width
• Brand mark: 2–3% of canvas width

At 1000 px wide, that means a headline around 90–150 px. At 1080 px, roughly 97–162 px.

Common mistakes

• Designing at 735 × 1102 px because a blog template said so — it is too small for retina.
• Adding a border to "stand out" — it reads as an ad.
• Using 1:1 because it is convenient — it wastes the feed's vertical space.
• Exporting at 300 DPI for web — DPI is irrelevant on screens; pixel dimensions are what matter.

The practical setup

Design at 2× the export size if your tool allows it, keep the headline inside the middle 76% of the canvas, and export one PNG per ratio. PinPower exports all three ratios from the same headline, so you can publish the 2:3 to your main board and the 9:16 to a story board without redesigning.

Try all three ratios on one headline.