Instagram grid crop: how 4:5 posts show on your profile

The Instagram grid crop works like this: your profile shows every post as a 3:4 tile cut from the centre of the image, whatever shape you uploaded. A 4:5 portrait post at 1080×1350 is the closest fit and loses only about 34 pixels from each side, so keep words and logos a little in from the left and right edges and it will look almost exactly as designed. Squares, landscapes and Reel covers lose much more, in different directions.

What the grid keeps from each post shape

The grid used to be square, and many older guides still assume it is. If your old posts were designed for square tiles, their tops and bottoms now show and their sides are cut, so some may look off centre. That is worth a look before you plan anything new. The upload sizes themselves are covered in Instagram post size.

Designing 4:5 posts for the 3:4 grid

Portrait is the easy case, but the margin matters more than the crop. The tile is small on a phone, and type that sits right against its edge looks clipped even when it technically fits. A good working safe area for a 1080×1350 post is the middle 920×1150: at least 80 pixels in from each side and about 100 from the top and bottom.

1. 1

   Draw the grid crop

   On a 1080×1350 canvas, add vertical guides at 34 and 1046 pixels. That is the tile's edge.

2. 2

   Draw the safe area inside it

   Add guides at 80 and 1000 pixels across, and 100 and 1250 down. Words, logos and faces live inside this box.

3. 3

   Set the headline for the tile, not the feed

   In the grid your post is about a third of the screen's width. A headline that is comfortable in the feed can be unreadable there, so go larger than feels necessary.

4. 4

   Check at thumbnail size

   Shrink your export to about 350 pixels wide and look at it. If you can't read it there, nobody browsing your profile can.

Squares, landscapes and Reel covers on the grid

The other shapes need their own safe areas. For a square, keep words inside the middle 810 pixels of width, explained in Instagram square post size. For a landscape post, the grid keeps only about two fifths of the width, so the subject must sit in the centre; see Instagram landscape size. For Reels, keep the title between roughly 285 and 1635 pixels down, as covered in Instagram Reel cover size.

Planning a profile grid that reads well

People judge a profile in a glance at nine to twelve tiles. What reads at that scale is colour, rhythm and one or two words per tile, not detail. Consistency in those three things is what makes a grid look deliberate, more than any single post.

Split images, the large picture cut into a three by three puzzle, were built on square tiles. With 3:4 tiles and cropping on every edge, the pieces no longer meet, and a single new post shifts every piece along by one. If you want continuity across posts, use a shared colour system and a panoramic carousel instead, which keeps the joined image inside one post.

A palette like this gives you two kinds of tile, dark and light, and lets you alternate them in a pattern people notice without thinking about it. Instagram grid aesthetic has more patterns. Gradiently makes the background part easy to keep: every post can wear your Mark, a living gradient that only you can export with once you claim it, so the grid holds together however much the words change.