Youtube Thumbnail Size

Rake in more views with the perfect YouTube thumbnails—starting with knowing the ideal YouTube thumbnail size and best practices.

The thumbnail you’ve made for your video doesn’t look good? Check out our guide on the recommended YouTube thumbnail size and best practices.

If you want to get more views on your YouTube videos, there’s one tactic you can use to get them instantly: use better thumbnail images.

Thumbnail images are just as important as the video’s title if you actually want to get clicks. The images themselves are what can jump out at users and help you stand out in a long line of search results. Since these image thumbnails also show up on Google’s search engines, they’re essential to maximize your impressions.

This is the first question we need to answer before we address anything else: what are the best YouTube thumbnail sizes? By Google’s own recommendations, your image should be 1280 x 720 pixels, with a minimum width of 640 pixels. A ratio of 16:9 is ideal as it’s used most often in YouTube players and previews.

This surprises most people, but it makes sense; while the thumbnail will be small when showing up in searches, it will be expanded to a full video’s size when it shows up as a suggestion for the next watch. For this reason, you want a larger image size that can be scaled down, instead of a small size that will be scaled up.

YouTube thumbnails are stronger with at least some design elements that help them look more professional.

While many people and businesses will use one of the thumbnails YouTube automatically pulls from their video, this limits the video’s potential. Custom thumbnails will help your video to pop and stand out from the rest. It makes your videos instantly look professionally made and high quality.

Another popular option is to use a custom-made image that features simple graphics and the video’s title. Many of these images will also show the business’s name or logo in one of the bottom corners so that it’s discrete, but still there.

Regardless of what type of image you choose, you should strive for consistency in their appearance. Many people and businesses will add the same distinctive branding to each of their videos, even if the image itself changes. This makes it extremely easy for users to identify your videos quickly, and it helps them pick out your content in the video suggestions on the right side of the page. This can help drive clicks and views while building extremely valuable brand recognition.

It’s much more important to have a high quality, professional looking image than one literally lifted from the video.

Using the right colors will go a long way in getting more views and clicks on your content. That includes using contrasting colors.