Instagram Story

1080 x 1920 px sRGB 9:16 portrait

A 1080 by 1920 px vertical canvas. The full-screen phone format Instagram Stories, Reels covers, and any 9:16 hand-held design works in.

about a phone-screen tall vertical

About this size

Stories take the entire phone screen, and that is most of what makes the format powerful. Nothing competes for attention except the user's thumb. The cost is that Instagram's own UI lives inside the frame: profile chrome at the top, captions and reply bar at the bottom, sticker controls on the right. The visible safe area is roughly the middle 1300 px of the 1920 px height. Design the focal subject there; let the bands above and below it carry background, gradient, or texture that softens the UI overlay rather than fighting it.

Reels covers use the same canvas, but with a twist: the feed and profile previews crop covers to roughly 1:1 in some surfaces. Compose with a centred subject so the cover survives both the full-screen view and the truncated thumbnail.

Stories
Vertical promos
Phone wallpaper

Pro tips

1 The safe area is the middle 1300 px. Headlines, faces, and the call to action all live there. Treat the top 250 px and bottom 340 px as overlay-aware decoration.
2 Type wants to be larger here than anywhere else on Instagram. Stories are consumed in seconds, often without sound, and small body copy disappears.
3 Interactive stickers and tap prompts belong in the lower-middle band. Anything inside the bottom 340 px collides with the reply bar.
4 This same canvas covers TikTok and YouTube Shorts when the design avoids platform-specific chrome. One file, three uploads.

Common mistakes

Putting a headline at the very top where the profile chrome lives. The reader sees the top of your headline cut off by an avatar circle and a follow button.
Locating the call to action in the bottom 340 px where the reply bar covers it. The viewer never sees the ask.
Padding a landscape composition into a 9:16 frame with thick black bars. The story format rewards full-bleed; letterboxing reads as a placeholder.

Frequently asked

What size is an Instagram Story?

1080 by 1920 px at 9:16. Reels use the same canvas.

Can this be used for Reels covers?

Yes. Keep the focal subject centred vertically because feed and profile previews crop covers more aggressively than the full-screen view does.

What is the safe area for a Story?

Keep critical content out of the top 250 px (profile chrome) and the bottom 340 px (captions and reply bar). The middle 1300 px is the zone the reader actually sees clean.