Highlight covers sit directly under your bio, which makes them the second thing a visitor sees and the first thing that tells them whether your profile is organized. A set of mismatched covers reads as clutter even when the content behind them is good.
The main design decision is not which icons to use. It is whether the whole row shares one visual rule, because consistency across five covers does more for a profile than any individual cover design.
Minimal and neutral
- Flat cream backgrounds with thin black text
- Warm beige with a small centered line drawing
- Off white with lowercase labels
- Single sand tone across every cover, no icons
- Soft grey with a thin border
- White covers with one accent color used once
- Muted clay tones, one per highlight
Photo covers
- A cropped detail from the first story in each highlight
- Black and white versions of your own photos
- The same photo at different zoom levels for each cover
- Texture close-ups: linen, wood, concrete, paper
- One landscape from each trip for travel highlights
- Product photos on a plain backdrop for a shop
Icon covers
- Simple line icons in one weight, one color
- Filled icons on a dark background
- Hand drawn icons scanned in
- Emoji screenshotted on a plain background
- Weather and object icons for seasonal highlights
- Numbers instead of icons for a series
Text only covers
- One word per cover in the same font
- Two letters, like AB or Q1, for short labels
- Lowercase words, centered, generous spacing
- Bold single words on a bright background
- Handwritten labels photographed on paper
Color led
- One color per highlight, everything else identical
- A gradient across the row, light on the left to dark on the right
- Two colors alternating
- All black covers with white labels
- Seasonal palette that you swap twice a year
For business profiles
- Menu, Hours, Location, Reviews, FAQ as five plain text covers
- Before and after covers made from your own work
- Service names on a brand color background
- Team photos for an About highlight
- One cover per product category
Practical sets that work
- Home, Work, Travel, Food, Saved
- New, Shop, FAQ, Reviews, Behind
- 2024, 2025, 2026 for yearly archives
- Recipes, Reels, Tips, Q&A
- Family, Dog, House, Garden
Seasonal sets
- Autumn palette from October, spring palette from March
- Snow photos for a winter highlight, sea for summer
- One cover swapped each month to mark the current focus
- Holiday covers you archive in January
- Warm tones half the year, cool tones the other half
Low effort covers that still look tidy
- Screenshot a solid color and add one letter
- Use the same photo for every cover, cropped differently
- Pick five stories you already posted and crop the middle
- Solid black for everything, labels only
- One photo of a wall in your house as the background for all of them
How to pick one
Pick the rule first and the artwork second. Decide on one background color, one font, and one icon style, then apply it to every cover, because the row is read as a single object rather than as five separate images. Keep the labels short, since the text under a highlight cuts off after roughly ten characters and a long word becomes unreadable. Choose covers that match what is inside rather than what looks good, because a beautiful cover on an empty highlight annoys people. Check the row on a phone against both light and dark mode, since a white cover set can look striking on one and washed out on the other. And leave old highlights up only if they still represent you, because an out of date row is worse than three current ones. If you are not sure which highlights your account should even have, the content pillar generator is a quick way to find the three or four themes you actually post about. The Instagram post ideas generator can help if you are working out which highlights you even need.