What are the ideal sizes for website images?

The simple answer is, it depends! For site owners who are looking to ensure that their sites load quickly, then it’s imperative to have a crunched-down version of the full resolution image uploaded, with a max file size of about 250kb. (Have a read here on how to resize really large images).

As a quick rule of thumb, you should aim to use the following sizes for your website images:

For large slideshows, or full-width content areas using a photo background:
Ensure the width of the image is at least 1920 pixels wide (HD) and max 250KB filesize.

For galleries:
Ensure each image’s width is approx 1200 pixels wide, and aim for 150kb filesize. This provides a nice size for the pop up version (lightbox).

For small images (that don’t need to open up into a larger image):
You can make these images quite small, depending on how big you need them on the screen; always consider users who may be using large screensizes so aim for approx 800 pixels wide – see example below – if viewed on a 2560 pixel width screen, you would need each image to be at least 850 wide if you want the row to be full width. These can be small file sizes; approx 100KB or less.

Medium Images
For a row with 2 columns, where one column is an image, you need to ensure it’s at least 1300 pixels wide; max 200KB file size – see example:

Got any questions? Please use the comments box below, or send us a question here