Notion Cover Size: The Exact Dimensions (and Why Yours Looks Blurry)
The ideal Notion cover size is 1500 × 600 pixels — a 5:2 image that is wide enough to stay sharp on large screens and tall enough to leave room for repositioning. Notion doesn't enforce an exact size, but anything narrower than 1500 pixels gets stretched to fill the page width, which is the number-one reason covers come out blurry.
That's the short answer. The longer answer — and the reason "notion cover size" is worth a whole guide — is that Notion doesn't display your whole image. It shows a wide, shallow strip of it, and how much of the image survives depends on your window size and device. Understanding that crop is the difference between a cover that looks designed and one with the subject's head cut off.
Key Takeaways
- Upload covers at 1500 × 600 px (5:2). Wider is fine; narrower gets upscaled and turns soft.
- Notion displays a shallow horizontal slice of your image, not the full frame — keep the important detail in the vertical middle.
- Blurry covers are almost always too-small source images. Fix the source, not the zoom.
- Every cover in our free gallery is already exactly 1500 × 600, so you can skip the resizing entirely.
The exact numbers
| Property | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Upload size | 1500 × 600 px (5:2 ratio) |
| Minimum width | 1500 px — below this, Notion upscales and the cover softens |
| Visible area on desktop | a full-width strip roughly the middle third to middle half of a 1500 × 600 image, depending on window size |
| Safe zone | keep faces, text, and focal points in the vertical center of the image |
| File formats | JPEG, PNG, WebP, and GIF (animated GIFs play) |
| File size | keep it comfortably under Notion's per-file upload limit — a webp at these dimensions is typically well under 100 KB |
There is no single "correct" pixel height for what Notion shows, because the cover band scales with your browser window: the width always spans the page, and the height is a fixed-ish band (roughly 280 px tall on a typical laptop window). That's why a 5:2 upload works so well — it gives Notion enough vertical material to crop from, and gives you room to slide the image up or down with Reposition.
How Notion actually crops your cover
When you add a cover, Notion:
- Scales the image to the full width of the page — window width in full-width pages, content width otherwise.
- Crops it vertically to the cover band. On desktop that band is shallow; on mobile it's shallower still and centered.
- Lets you drag the visible slice with Reposition (hover over the cover → Reposition → drag → Save position).
Two practical consequences:
- Design for a strip, not a rectangle. A pattern, gradient, or texture survives any crop. A single centered subject survives most crops. An image with text near the top or bottom edge will lose it.
- The same cover crops differently on desktop and mobile. If your cover must work everywhere, keep the interesting part dead-center. This is why most cover packs — ours included — lean on gradients, grids, and patterns rather than photography with a subject.
Why your Notion cover is blurry (and the fix)
Nearly every blurry cover comes down to one of these:
- The source image is too small. An 800-pixel-wide image stretched across a 1600-pixel window is being blown up to 200%. Fix: use a source at least 1500 px wide — there's no penalty for going bigger.
- Heavy JPEG compression. Gradients and flat colors show JPEG artifacts badly once stretched. Fix: use WebP or PNG for flat graphics and gradients; save photos as high-quality JPEG.
- Screenshots of images. A screenshot inherits your screen's scaling and any compression from the original. Fix: download the actual file instead of screenshotting it.
If you'd rather not think about any of this: every cover in the free covers gallery is generated at exactly 1500 × 600 in lossless-leaning WebP, so it's sharp at any page width Notion renders.
GIF and animated covers
Notion accepts animated GIFs as covers, and they play automatically. The same size rules apply — aim for at least 1500 px wide — but be aware that GIF is a heavy format at those dimensions, so animated covers can noticeably slow down page loads, especially on mobile. If the animation isn't essential, a static WebP of the same art loads in a fraction of the time.
Cover size in gallery view
Database gallery view cards can show each page's cover ("Card preview" → "Page cover" in the view options). Cards crop the cover to the card's own aspect ratio, which is closer to a rectangle than the page-top strip — so a cover that looks perfect on the page may crop unexpectedly on its gallery card. Patterns and gradients are again the safe choice; if a card shows the wrong part of the image, Notion crops gallery cards from the image center, so centering the subject fixes both views at once.
Can you make the Notion cover bigger or taller?
Not natively — the cover band's height is fixed by Notion and there's no setting to enlarge it. The common workarounds:
- Skip the cover and place a full-width image block at the top of the page instead. You control its height completely (though it scrolls with the content rather than sitting behind the title).
- Treat the cover as a color band rather than a hero image — a gradient or texture doesn't need more height to work.
Where to get covers that are already the right size
You can crop your own images to 1500 × 600 in any editor, pull something from Notion's built-in Unsplash search, or start from a pack that's pre-sized. Our free Notion covers gallery has 70+ covers across ten styles — including aesthetic creams, cute patterns, and clean minimalist textures — all exactly 1500 × 600, downloadable in one click with no account or watermark. If you're styling the whole page to match, the aesthetic Notion widgets guide covers the widget half of the equation, and the 30-second embed guide shows how to add them.
FAQ
What size should a Notion cover be?
Upload 1500 × 600 pixels (a 5:2 ratio). Notion stretches anything narrower to the page width, which causes blur — so treat 1500 px as the minimum width, not a target.
What is the Notion cover ratio?
Upload at 5:2 (1500 × 600). What's displayed is wider and shallower — a strip whose exact proportions depend on your window — so the 5:2 upload exists to give Notion cropping room, not because you'll see all of it.
Why is my Notion cover blurry?
The source image is almost certainly narrower than your page. Replace it with a version at least 1500 px wide; prefer WebP or PNG for gradients and flat graphics.
Does Notion support GIF covers?
Yes — animated GIFs play as covers. Keep them at least 1500 px wide like any cover, and expect heavier page loads than a static image.
How do I move which part of the cover is visible?
Hover over the cover, click Reposition, drag the image up or down, then Save position. This only shifts the vertical crop — designing the image with a centered focal point matters more.