Facebook COVER pictures, dimensions and guidelines.

5th December 2013

A Facebook cover photo is important for business pages, here are some rules and tips.

First of all, let's just make sure you know what picture we're talking about. It's the big picture, at the top of the page:

This was the Zonua Facebook Cover, 5th December 2013 on www.facebook.com/zonua.

The dimension for Facebook photos are 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall

Facebook Cover Picture Rules for Business Pages

Dimensions
The dimensions for Facebook cover pictures are: 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall
Text
Facebook cover pictures may not include images with more than 20% text EDIT 26th February 2014: This rule is gone, see a more detailed up-to-date article here, which includes some hints and tips about Facebook Cover Pictures Design.
Clarification
You are allowed to use a call to action. (Previously this was not allowed)

Extra stuff/tips

Use JPG to the exact dimensions (851 pixels by 315pixels) for the quickest load time
If you upload an image bigger than those dimensions, you can still scale/crop within Facebook
If you upload an image smaller than those dimensions, it will scale up, but look grainy on bigger screens (e.g. desktops/laptops/tablets). However the minimum width you can upload is 399pixels anyway.
You may get better quality if you use PNG for text-heavy images. This is true for all images on the web, not just on Facebook.
If you are really concerned about the 20% text rule, you can check out coverphoto.paavo.ch.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if I've left anything out!?

Hi, I'm Dorcas. I make websites. I lecture in Digital Marketing and related stuff in the UCD Smurfit School. I do consultancy. I do talks. I've written a book on WordPress (available here).