How to Design Pinterest Pins That Get Clicks (Not Just Saves)

To design Pinterest pins that get clicks, you need two things working together: a visual that stops the scroll and a text overlay that creates enough curiosity to make someone tap through. Most pins fail at one or the other, and the gap is usually visible the moment you shrink the design down to mobile size.

What makes a Pinterest pin get clicked (and what most designers get wrong)

The most common mistake is designing for a desktop screen when over 85% of Pinterest users browse on mobile. A pin that looks polished at full size often becomes an unreadable blur in a feed thumbnail. Legibility beats beauty every time.

Pinterest's internal data shows that pins with a clear focal point in the top third of the image retain saves at twice the rate of pins without one. That single fact should reshape how you approach every composition.

Here is the click-trigger hierarchy this post is built around, ranked by measurable impact on click-through rate:

1. Contrast between text and background
2. Headline copy clarity in the text overlay
3. Image relevance to the topic and audience
4. Colour stop-scroll power
5. Brand consistency

Think of this as your triage list. If tier one is broken, nothing else saves the pin. More on each tier below.

What size and format should Pinterest pins be in 2024?

The optimal aspect ratio is 2:3, specifically 1000 x 1500 px for standard pins. That is Pinterest's current recommendation and it fills the most vertical real estate in the feed without being cropped.

Avoid square (1:1) or landscape orientations. Both get cropped in the feed, often cutting off the most important part of your image or text. For video pins, 1:1 or 9:16 work well, and keeping them under 15 seconds gives you the highest completion rates. Keep file sizes under 20 MB. Use JPEG for photo-heavy pins and PNG when your design relies on sharp text or graphic elements.

Idea Pins use a separate format: 1080 x 1920 px. They work more like Stories and suit brand awareness better than driving outbound link clicks, so treat them as a separate content type rather than a substitute for standard pins.

How to choose images that stop the scroll on Pinterest

Colour temperature matters more than most creators realise. Warm tones, specifically reds, oranges, and pinks, consistently outperform cool, blue-dominant images in Pinterest click-through studies. If your niche allows any flexibility in image selection, lean warm.

According to Tailwind research, lifestyle images outperform product-only images by roughly 67% across most niches. A photo of someone using your product or applying your advice in a real setting will almost always beat a clean product shot on a white background.

Keep the composition uncluttered. A single focal point makes it easier for the eye to land and keeps your text overlay readable. Busy backgrounds reduce legibility and scatter attention.

On faces: the results are genuinely mixed. A face looking directly at the camera can boost relatability, but it can also pull attention away from your call to action. Test both versions before committing to a template.

One practical habit worth building: when you are sourcing or shooting images, look for vertical negative space at the top or bottom of the frame. That open space is where your text overlay will live, and it is much easier to plan for before you have a finished photo than to fake it in post-production.

How to write text overlays that drive clicks (not just saves)

Your text overlay does the same job as a headline. Lead with a benefit or a specific number: "7 ways to...", "The exact template for...", "Stop doing this to your..." These formats work because they signal a concrete payoff and leave a small gap the reader has to click to close.

Font size is a practical issue, not a stylistic one. Your primary text needs to be readable at roughly 150 px wide, which is about what a mobile feed thumbnail shows. A fast way to check: shrink your Canva design to 20% before you publish. If you struggle to read it, so will your audience.

Stick to a maximum of two font styles per pin. A bold display font paired with a clean body font works well in most niches. Playfair Display and Lato is a reliable combination, but the principle matters more than the specific pairing.

Place your primary text in the top 60% of the pin. Pinterest crops the bottom in certain feed views, so anything critical sitting low on the pin risks disappearing entirely.

For contrast, use a minimum ratio of 4.5:1 between your text colour and the background. That is the WCAG AA accessibility standard, and it also happens to be the point at which text becomes genuinely easy to read at a glance. You can check any colour combination with the WebAIM Contrast Checker.

Add a short call-to-action phrase directly in the overlay: "Read more", "Get the guide", "Save for later". Pins with a visible CTA in the image consistently see higher link clicks than pins that rely on saves alone.

How to use colour and branding without killing click-through rate

A simple formula: one dominant colour taking up about 60% of the pin, one supporting colour at 30%, and one accent colour used specifically for your CTA element at 10%. That accent colour is the one you train the eye to associate with action.

Avoid pure white backgrounds. Pinterest's UI is white, and a pin with a white background visually disappears into the page. Use off-white (around #F5F5F5) or a cream tone, or add a subtle border to give the pin visible edges.

Brand consistency across a batch of five to ten pins builds recognition at the profile level. Returning visitors who recognise your style are more likely to click without hesitation, which is why investing time in templates pays off over months rather than just on individual pins.

When you want to test colour impact, create two versions of the same pin with different dominant colours and publish them to the same board seven days apart. Then compare link click data in Pinterest Analytics after 30 days. That is a clean, low-effort test you can run without any third-party tool.

The click-trigger hierarchy: which design elements to prioritise first

Most design advice treats every tip as equally important. This one does not. Here is how to allocate your design time:

This order reflects where each element sits in the viewer's split-second decision. Contrast is processed before the brain reads a word. Brand recognition is the last thing a new visitor notices. Spending an hour perfecting your logo placement while your text is half-illegible is the wrong trade-off.

How to test and improve your Pinterest pin designs with real data

Open Pinterest Analytics and filter your Top Pins by link clicks, not impressions and not saves. Saves tell you what people liked. Link clicks tell you what drove traffic. Those two lists are often very different.

For any given blog post or URL, create three different pin designs and publish them to the same board spread across a 30-day window. At the end of the period, you will have a clear winner and two data points on what did not work.

A healthy outbound link click rate sits between 0.5% and 1.5% of impressions. Below that range consistently, and the design, the copy, or both need a rethink.

Once you identify top performers, re-pin them to new boards every 90 days using a scheduling tool. Tailwind's SmartLoop automates this, and if you want to go further, Pinpress can automatically generate and schedule fresh pin variations from your existing blog posts so your top content stays active without manual work.

The most useful habit you can build is a swipe file of your five best-performing pins. Look at them side by side and ask what they share: a similar colour temperature, a specific headline structure, the same font weight, a particular image type. Whatever the common thread is, build it into your next template batch. That is how Pinterest design stops being guesswork and becomes a repeatable process.