UK passport photo requirements: size, head height and background

The UK’s passport photo rules are ordinary, except for one detail that catches almost everybody: the background is not white. HM Passport Office asks for a plain cream or light grey background, and a photo taken against the white wall most people assume is correct is the commonest self-inflicted problem there is.

Here is the whole thing, with the numbers from gov.uk, read on 17 September 2026.

The rules

Those are the figures this page will state. The online application also has requirements for the digital file you upload, and they are not reproduced here, because the rule on this site is that a number appears only when it has been read from the authority that publishes it. The application tells you its own limits at the point where it asks for the photo.

The background, which is the whole problem

Almost every country in the requirements table wants white or near-white. The UK does not. It asks for cream or light grey, and it is specific enough about it that the difference matters. Ireland, next door, takes the wider list of light grey, white or cream, and its pixel size and rules are in Irish passport photo requirements. Australia, on the same paper size, allows white as well as light grey and asks for a larger head, 32 to 36 mm against the UK’s 29 to 34 mm, which is set out in Australian passport photo requirements.

This causes two mistakes.

Using a white wall on purpose. People know passport photos have white backgrounds, find the whitest wall in the house, and photograph against it. The result is the wrong colour for the document they are applying for.

Trying to fix it afterwards. This is the worse one. A replaced background is an edited photo, and an edited photo is rejected, whatever colour it has been replaced with. You cannot photograph yourself against white and then make the background grey. Passport photo backgrounds goes into why that rule exists and what “plain” means in practice.

What works is a pale wall that is already the right sort of colour, lit evenly. Magnolia, light grey, pale cream, the colour most rented flats already are. If your only pale wall is white, stand a metre away from it in soft daylight: an even, slightly shaded white wall photographs as a very light grey, which is what the rule is describing. What you must not do is add a shadow deliberately to darken it, because an uneven background fails for a different reason.

The head height, and why it is not a crop setting

29 to 34 mm inside a 45 mm photo is a narrow band: the head fills roughly two thirds to three quarters of the picture’s height, and there is not much room either side of that.

The mistake is thinking this is decided when you crop. It is mostly decided when you press the shutter, by how far the camera was from your face. Too close and the head is too large for the frame no matter where you put the crop; too far and cropping in enough leaves you with too few pixels.

Take the photograph from about two metres with head and shoulders in the frame and space above the head, then crop in. That gives you room to move the crop until the chin and the crown both sit inside the band.

Glasses, expressions and the other rules

Glasses are allowed only if you have to wear them, and tinted lenses and sunglasses never are. Even where they are allowed the eyes must be clearly visible with no glare, which is hard to guarantee at home. If you can take them off for ten seconds, take them off.

Expression. Neutral, mouth closed, looking straight at the camera. No smile. Both eyes open and not covered by hair.

Head coverings worn for religious or medical reasons are allowed, with the face clear from the bottom of the chin to the top of the forehead.

Nothing else in the frame. No other person, no hands, no chair back, no toy. For a baby this is the difficult rule rather than the expression one, and baby passport photos covers the usual way round it.

Printing it, and the two settings that ruin it

A UK passport photo is 35 x 45 mm on paper, and the cheapest way to get one is a 4 x 6 inch sheet with several copies laid out on it, printed at a kiosk or a photo lab on photo paper.

Two settings decide whether it comes out the right size. Scaling, sometimes called “fit to page”, shrinks the sheet by a couple of millimetres so it clears the printer’s margins, which makes every photo on it slightly too small. Borders do the same thing by a different route. Both are on by default in most print dialogues and at most kiosks, and both have to be off.

The result is invisible on screen and obvious at the counter: a 35 x 45 mm photo that measures 34 x 44 has been scaled, and the person checking it has a template. Measure one cut photo with a ruler before you go. If it is short, reprint with scaling off rather than trying to trim the others to match.

Photo paper matters too. A home inkjet on ordinary paper produces a photo that is the right size and the wrong surface, and the ink spreads enough to soften the face. A lab print costs less than a pound for a whole sheet.

If you are applying for a child

The rules are the same size and background, with the expression relaxed: a baby does not have to have a neutral expression or a closed mouth, and a very young baby’s eyes may be partly closed.

The rule that does not relax is that nobody else may appear in the photograph, which rules out the obvious method of holding the child up against the wall. The usual way round it is to lay the baby on a plain cream or light grey sheet with no pattern and no creases, and photograph from directly above, which also solves the shadow problem because there is no wall behind them. Baby passport photos goes through it properly, including the car seat trick for a child who cannot sit up yet.

Taking one at home

You are allowed to. A friend or a family member can take it, and the photograph itself is the same job as anywhere else:

1. Find a pale, plain wall with nothing on it, and stand about a metre in front of it so your shadow falls on the floor behind you rather than on the wall.
2. Face a window. Daylight on an overcast day is the best light for this.
3. Turn off portrait mode, beauty and any skin smoothing on the phone, and use the rear camera.
4. Have somebody shoot from about two metres, at the height of your eyes, with head and shoulders in the frame.
5. Crop to 35 x 45 mm with the head inside the band.
6. Print at 100 percent with no border and no fit to page, then measure the cut photo with a ruler.

How to take a passport photo at home has the detail on each of those, including why a photo taken at arm’s length fails in a way that has nothing to do with the framing.

What the tool does, and what it does not

getPNG crops and places the photograph at the official size and shows you where the head sits relative to the band. That is a real part of the job and it is the part a person is worst at doing by eye.

It does not judge the photograph. Whether your expression reads as neutral, whether the light across your face is even enough, whether the wall counts as plain cream or light grey: those are decided by HM Passport Office, and the link in the table above is the only source that settles it. No website can promise your photo will be accepted, and one that does is telling you something it has no way of knowing.

If a photo comes back queried, it is nearly always the background or a shadow. Both are fixed by standing further from a paler wall, in daylight, and taking it again.

Questions

What size is a UK passport photo?

35 x 45 mm printed, which is the standard size across most of Europe and is a portrait rectangle rather than a square. It is not the same as a US passport photo, which is 2 x 2 inches, so a photo cropped for one is not usable for the other.

Can a UK passport photo have a white background?

HM Passport Office asks for a plain cream or light grey background. White is the colour most people assume and it is not what gov.uk specifies, which is why photos taken against a white wall come back queried. A pale wall in even light, photographed from a metre away so no shadow falls on it, is what to aim for.

How big should the head be in a UK passport photo?

Between 29 and 34 mm from the bottom of the chin to the top of the head, inside a 45 mm tall photo. That is a narrow band and it is set by how far the camera was from you rather than by the crop alone, which is why it is worth taking the photograph with space around the head and cropping in afterwards.

Can I wear glasses in a UK passport photo?

Only if you have to wear them, and never sunglasses or tinted lenses. The eyes have to be clearly visible with no glare on the lenses, so if you can take them off, take them off.

Can I edit or retouch the photo?

No. The photo must be unaltered: no filters, no beautifying, no software-changed background. This catches people out because modern phones smooth skin by default in portrait and beauty modes, which is an edit whether or not you chose it. Turn those off before you take it.

What are the rules for the digital photo in the online application?

The online application states its own requirements for the digital file when you reach that step, and those figures are not reproduced here because this page does not repeat a number it has not read from the source. The photograph itself, its framing, its background and the rule against editing are the same either way, so take it correctly first and the digital step is a matter of uploading it.