Pinterest white-background Pins get a 4% overlay: what to do

Pinterest adds a faint color layer to image Pins that have a white or near-white background: a #000000 layer at 4% opacity in light mode, with no change in dark mode. Videos are not affected. If you generate Pin images, decide the background tone in the prompt rather than leaving pure white to be shaded.

The rule is from Pinterest's organic Pin specs page, read 2026-10-01. The page says it applies to all organic and paid image Pins and ad types.

What exactly does Pinterest apply?

The purpose, per the page, is to distinguish the Pin from the app background color and highlight links in the Pin.

How do I control the background in a generated image?

The prompt field is a non-empty string, so the tone is something you write: "warm off-white", "soft sage", "charcoal" rather than "white background". A mid-tone or colored background sits outside the white and black rules the page describes. Pinterest does not publish a threshold for "near white", so check a test Pin in both modes instead of assuming.

For a clean white product cutout look, see white background product photo AI and accept the overlay.

Which ratio and format should I request?

The Pin specs page lists 2:3 among its recommended video ratios, and the Sume image catalog lists 2:3 among its normalized aspect_ratio values (per model; check supported_parameters). Sume's output_format options are png, jpeg, jpg and webp; Pinterest lists BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF and WEBP as file types, so all four overlap. See the image docs.

What should I do before publishing?

Generate two variants of the same Pin, one with a white and one with a tinted background, and view both in the light and dark app. Keep whichever reads best in both.