The LinkedIn banner is the largest thing on your profile and the least used. Most people either leave the default gradient or upload a stock photo of a city skyline, which communicates nothing. The banner is free space for one sentence that your headline does not have room for.
There is one hard layout constraint before anything else: your profile photo sits over the lower left of the banner on desktop, and mobile crops the image differently again. Anything you put in the bottom left will be covered. Design for the right two thirds and the top half.
Below are 22 ideas grouped by what the banner is for.
Say what you do, in one line
These work because the banner is read before the About section and often before the headline. One sentence in large type is the highest value use of the space.
- Plain text on a flat colour: “I fix broken checkout flows for Shopify stores.”
- A single question aimed at your buyer: “Is your invoice process still a spreadsheet?”
- Your specialism plus your geography: “Flood risk consultancy. North of England.”
- A statement of who you are not for: “Enterprise only. Minimum engagement six weeks.”
- The problem, not the service: “Most support queues are a documentation problem.”
Proof and credibility
Numbers hold attention in a way adjectives do not, and a banner is one of the few places a number can be large.
- One metric, very large: “1,100 veterinary clinics.”
- A time span: “Twenty two years in supply chain.”
- A named list of client logos, kept to four or five, evenly spaced on the right.
- A single quoted line from a client, with attribution, in modest type.
- A qualification or accreditation mark, placed right, with the name spelled out rather than only the badge.
Job seeking
A banner is a good place to be explicit about what you want, because it does not have the space constraints of a headline.
- “Open to senior backend roles. UK remote. Available from October.”
- “Career changer: nursing to data analysis. Portfolio link in the About section.”
- “Looking for a design team of two to six people.”
- A three word version of your specialism in very large type, with “open to work” small underneath.
Company pages and personal brands
- Product screenshot cropped to one clear feature, with the rest of the interface cut away rather than shrunk.
- A photograph of the actual thing you make, shot plainly, filling the frame.
- Your team, actual people, in an ordinary room. Real photos beat stock every time and are more memorable than any graphic.
- A map of where you operate, if geography is the differentiator.
- A single illustration or pattern in one brand colour, with no text at all. Restraint reads as confidence.
Practical and functional
- A calendar link written out as text, so someone can type it: “book a call at yourname.com/call”.
- The event you are speaking at, with the date, swapped out after it passes.
- The book, report, or template you want people to download, named clearly.
- A photo of your workspace or your work in progress, which is more disclosive than a logo and costs nothing.
What to avoid
The banner equivalent of “I’m thrilled to announce” is the generic city skyline or the handshake stock photo. It is not offensive, it is invisible, and it takes up the most valuable rectangle on your profile to say nothing.
| Mistake | Why it hurts |
|---|---|
| Text in the bottom left | Covered by your profile photo on desktop |
| Text near any edge | Mobile crops the banner differently |
| Small type | It renders at a fraction of its size on a phone |
| A skyline, handshake, or laptop stock photo | Says nothing about you |
| A busy photo with text over the busy part | Unreadable at profile size |
| Five different messages | The banner supports one |
| Uploading a low resolution file | It stretches and looks worse than the default |
| A banner listing an outdated role or event | Worse than no banner |
The rule of thumb that survives every layout change: assume everything except the middle right of the image might be cropped or covered, and put nothing there you cannot afford to lose.
Getting the dimensions right
LinkedIn crops uploads to its own aspect ratio, and an image that is the wrong shape will be trimmed unpredictably. Rather than reciting a number that changes, check your file against the current spec with the LinkedIn background cover size checker, which will also tell you if the file is too small to render sharply. For company pages the cover is a different shape again, so use the LinkedIn company cover size checker for that one.
Export at the largest size the checker accepts rather than the smallest that fits. LinkedIn re-compresses uploads, and starting from a larger file leaves more quality after that pass.
The short version
Use the banner for one sentence your headline has no room for. Keep everything out of the bottom left, where your profile photo sits. Set the type larger than feels necessary. Skip skylines and handshakes. Check the file against the current size spec before uploading, and re-check it whenever LinkedIn changes the profile layout.
Where the banner fits with everything else
A banner is worth about ten minutes of work and then it sits there for a year. The parts of your profile that need ongoing attention are the headline, which appears beside every comment you leave, and the posting itself. If the posting is the part that slips, BulkPublish queues LinkedIn alongside your other networks so a batch of drafts goes out on a schedule rather than when you remember. The banner is a one time job. The feed is not.