Designing a consistent set of Instagram highlight covers

What highlight covers do for a profile

Highlights are the row of circles between the bio and the grid. Each one collects stories that stay on your profile after the usual 24 hours: a menu, prices, reviews, a trip, answers to the questions people keep asking. For a visitor who has never seen your account, that row is a table of contents. Clear covers tell them in a second where to tap.

When you create a highlight, Instagram lets you pick the stories, then choose a cover and a name with Edit cover (Instagram Help Center (opens in a new tab), checked November 2026). Without a custom cover, the circle shows a crop of one of the stories, which usually means a random detail of a photo. A set of matching covers replaces that with something calm and readable.

This post is about designing the set: which highlights to make, which icons, which colors and which names. For the sizes and the tool itself, see the highlight cover maker and our image size guide.

Plan the set before you design it

Start with a list, not with colors. Write down the questions new visitors ask you most often, and turn each one into a highlight. Only the first few circles are visible without swiping sideways, so the most important highlight goes first.

As a rule of thumb, three to seven highlights are enough for most accounts; past that, people stop reading. Our profile audit counts three or more highlights as a pass, which is also our own rough guide rather than an Instagram rule. Merge small topics ("Shipping" and "Returns" can be one highlight) and drop the ones you never update.

Choosing icons that read at a small size

A highlight circle on a phone is small, roughly the size of a fingertip. Detail disappears; shape is all that is left. That gives a few practical rules:

• One icon family. Use icons from the same set, with the same line thickness and corner style. Mixing a thin line coffee cup with a filled cartoon camera breaks the set more than any color choice.
• Simple, literal metaphors. A cup for menu, a star for reviews, a box for shipping, a clock for hours. Clever icons that need explaining defeat the purpose.
• Thicker lines than you think. Thin lines turn gray and fuzzy when the circle is shrunk. Raise the line thickness until the icon still reads with your arm stretched out.
• Space around the icon. Instagram crops the cover to a circle, so anything near the corners of a square is lost. In our maker the icon size runs from 20 to 70 percent of the circle; something between about 35 and 50 percent usually leaves enough breathing room.
• Icons, not letters. A single letter or a word inside the circle repeats the name that Instagram already writes underneath, and it is harder to read than an icon.

Colors and backgrounds

A set looks consistent when the background changes less than the icon. Pick one background treatment for every cover and change only the icon. The common approaches:

Check contrast before you export. The icon must stand out clearly from the background, which rules out light gray on beige and dark blue on black. Remember also that people see your profile in Instagram's light and dark themes. A cover with its own solid background looks the same in both; a transparent or very light one can disappear against a white screen.

To tie the covers to the rest of the profile, reuse two or three colors that already appear in your posts. If you design posts with templates, use the same palette there, so the grid and the highlights look like they belong together.

Names that fit under the circle

Instagram writes the highlight name under each cover in small type, and long names are cut off. Short, plain names work best:

• One word where possible: Menu, Prices, Reviews, Travel.
• The same language and the same capitalization for all of them.
• Words visitors would use, not inside jokes. "Reviews" beats "Love notes" for a business.
• No emoji as the whole name. Screen readers read them aloud, and the meaning is not always clear.

Our post on auditing your profile covers how highlights work together with the bio, the link and the grid.

Making the set with our cover maker

The maker exports two sizes: a 320 × 320 square to choose directly as the cover, or a 1080 × 1920 story frame with the icon centered, if you prefer to post the cover as a story first. Everything runs in your browser; your photos are not uploaded. To design the stories that go inside the highlights in the same look, use the story templates; the template gallery shows covers, story and post templates together. Our post on story template design has more on layout and readable text.

Common mistakes

• Every cover a different style. Five different backgrounds and three icon sets look like five accounts. Change one thing per cover: the icon.
• Icons touching the edge. The circle cuts them off. Keep a clear margin all around.
• Too many highlights. A long row nobody scrolls is worse than five clear ones.
• Old highlights left behind. A "Summer sale" from two years ago tells visitors the account is not looked after. Delete or rename it.
• Covers that do not match what is inside. If the Menu highlight opens with a selfie, the cover promised the wrong thing. Put the most useful story first.

Highlight cover questions