Optimize your YouTube banner with these dimensions: 2560 pixels wide by 1440 pixels tall. Keep in mind that banners look different on desktop, mobile, and TV displays.
Long-form video content is a powerful tool for businesses that continues to drive engagement. YouTube is a leading video platform that more businesses should be using.
While most businesses have optimized their Facebook Pages and Instagram profiles, many small businesses tend to neglect their YouTube channels—if they have one at all. The first step towards making your channel look great (and legitimate) is with high-quality YouTube channel art, and luckily, it’s actually pretty easy to make a YouTube banner.
In this post, we’re going to discuss everything you need to know about creating YouTube banners, including the best YouTube banner sizes, examples, and practices.
YouTube Banner Guidelines
While it can be tricky to get your YouTube banner size just right on your desktop computer, you need to make sure that your banner looks great on all devices and browsers. Since it will be displayed differently on certain devices, it’s a good idea to follow YouTube’s official size recommendations for the ideal YouTube channel art size.
According to YouTube, the best banner size is 2560 pixels wide by 1440 pixels tall. There are also other YouTube banner guidelines to keep in mind, these include:
- Recommended dimensions: 2560 x 1440 pixels
- Minimum dimensions for uploading: 2048 x 1152 pixels with an aspect ratio of 16:9
- Minimum dimension safe area for text and logos: 1235 x 338 pixels
- Standard safe area for text and logos on all devices: 1546 x 423 pixels
- Maximum file size: 6MB (but file sizes can be smaller)
While using the 2560px by 1440px size ensures your banner will fit properly on a TV screen, you also need to worry about how your banner will look on desktop and mobile devices. Check out the YouTube banner size guide above to view how your banner will display on all devices. Again, these dimensions and safe zones are built directly into Snappa for quick and easy YouTube banner creation.
How to Make a YouTube Banner with Snappa
Don’t want to deal with the difficulty of making your YouTube banner the right size? Snappa can help you there, and our drag-and-drop design software is easy to use even if you have zero graphic design experience. Here is a video we made to show you how to make a YouTube banner for your channel!
To make things as simple and painless as possible, you can choose one of Snappa’s customizable, pre-sized YouTube banner templates. These can be found under “Headers” in Snappa’s templates section, and will be automatically set to the perfect YouTube channel art size. If you’re ready to create a free YouTube banner in less than 5 minutes, follow the steps below!
There are hundreds of templates that you can choose from, all of which can be customized.
When designing your banner, Snappa will automatically show you which areas will be visible on different screens. In the example below, you’ll see that the top and bottom portions of the screen are “TV Only Areas,” while the desktop safe areas are also indicated. This allows you to create designs that will look great on all devices. We suggest keeping your main design elements within the inner safe zone like this example below, and you’ll never have to worry about your design being cut off on mobile devices or tablets.
These YouTube banner templates are customizable and can be changed entirely. You can swap in stock photos, and add in (or remove) design elements like shapes, graphics, and text. And while you should focus on adding important design elements to the middle safe zone area, you can also add nonessential design elements to the “TV only” or “desktop only” areas.
How to Upload YouTube Channel Art
Uploading your YouTube banner will only take 1-2 minutes. To add a YouTube banner, head over to YouTube, and click on your channel icon in the top right corner of your screen and select “YouTube Studio.”
From there, navigate to the menu on the left, scroll down and click “Customization.”
On this page, click “Change” under the Banner Image section and select the image file you want to upload as your new banner.
YouTube will then show you a preview of how your banner will look on all devices.
Once you’re happy with how your banner looks, you can click “Done” and “Publish” to save your changes and add your banner to your YouTube channel.
What Should My YouTube Banner Design Be?
Your banner can be anything, but it should help users identify your business or brand quickly. If your banner isn’t establishing some sort of brand recognition, it probably isn’t too effective. For great inspiration, check out the best YouTube banner ideas & examples.
As seen below, Snappa’s YouTube channel art is fun, straightforward, and vibrant; it includes our logo, brand colors, and hand-drawn illustrations.
Many YouTube channels benefit from using the same colors, fonts, logos, and taglines from their business. If you run an online business by yourself, try using a personal photo or portrait in your channel art to connect with your audience. Here is a great banner example from Sunny Lenarduzzi’s YouTube channel:
You can also temporarily change your YouTube banner to promote special events, like an upcoming webinar or giveaway contest. I’d recommend only doing this for major events that you really want to drive traffic to, and keeping your channel art consistent the rest of the time.
YouTube Banner Best Practices
When it’s time to create your YouTube banner, the sky is the limit. That being said, there are a few best practices that you should keep in mind so that you create a strong banner design that represents your business well.
These best practices include:
Don’t Neglect Spaces Outside Mobile-Only Areas
When you’re designing your channel art, it’s easy to focus on the safe zone area in the middle and ignore everything else. While this area should contain your most important design elements, make sure to also include design elements in the other areas of your banner that will be displayed on TVs and desktop computers.
Only Use High-Quality Images
Remember when we all struggled with uploading Facebook or Myspace profile pictures? We got the thumbnail size right, but when someone opened it to “full size,” it was blurry and didn’t scale quite right. You don’t want that to happen with your YouTube banner when it’s viewed on a TV screen.
Using a high-quality background image is an easy way to make sure that your banner will look great on all devices. A stunning photo will fill up the frame, making your banner visually-pleasing on any device. If you’re using Snappa to make your YouTube banner, our built-in stock photo library has a great selection of high-quality images to choose from.
Simple, Clean Designs Are Always Best
Most YouTube users will only view your channel on desktop and mobile devices. The last thing you want is for your banner to be so overwhelming and cluttered that viewers can’t understand the purpose of your brand or business.
If you look at Snappa’s YouTube banner templates, you’ll notice that we create many simple and clean designs through heavy utilization of negative space and sharp lines. Even when the background image is complex, your banner will remain grounded and organized.
Make Sure It Compliments Your YouTube Profile Picture
Your YouTube profile picture or channel icon is similar to a Facebook profile picture. It’s important to make sure that your channel icon compliments your banner since they’ll be displayed at the same time. Shown below is a great example from Unbox Therapy’s YouTube channel:
To change your YouTube profile picture, you can head back to the customization section of your YouTube Studio dashboard. Click “Change” under the Picture section, and you can upload the image file for your new channel icon. The best YouTube profile picture size is 800 x 800 pixels, but note that these are square dimensions and YouTube profile pictures are given a circular crop. For more information on YouTube profile pictures, we made a full guide to this here.
Final Thoughts
Well-designed YouTube banners are necessary to enhance your channel’s branding. Thanks to easy-to-use design tools like Snappa (which comes with fully customizable, pre-sized templates), anyone can make gorgeous, engaging channel art with no design experience needed. Remember to update your banner every so often to keep it fresh, especially if you change your business’s overall branding or the look of your YouTube channel.
