Understanding Pinterest Posting Trends

If you’re looking to level up your Pinterest Pins, there are several things you can do to get more out of this popular social “visual discovery engine.” As with any social network you are using or looking to adopt, start with your business goals, the audience you’re trying to reach, and what you’re trying to get Pinterest users to do.

Next, you want to look at how people use Pinterest and what is popular on the platform. According to Pinterest, their users save, plan, and shop. The company claims the most popular Pins are focused on fashion, food and drinks, beauty, home décor, and travel. If your business has nothing to do with those top topics, you can still find value building an active presence on Pinterest.

Using Pinterest can help you:

• Build brand awareness
• Drive traffic to your website
• Organize archives of visual content for your own use or to share with others, privately or publicly
• Showcase your products or services
• Sell products or services

To make an impact on Pinterest, you need to produce content that captures people’s attention – or spend advertising dollars to increase exposure. You need to understand what makes a pin stand out and get shares. Identifying trends can help you gain insights to Pinterest users at large. Knowing your audience helps you zero in on what content would be most valuable or interesting to them.

The first place to start to learn more about Pinterest trends is on the Trends page (trends.pinterest.com).  There you can get inspiration and see what is popular with currently Pinterest users. Once you know the trends, down to Pin style and even color schemes, you can use that information to guide creating your Pins.

Here’s a breakdown of some features of trending Pins that you can apply to the pins you create:

1. Long, tall graphics

The dimensions for social media images vary from network to network. While a square 1080x1080 image is standard on most social network feeds, the standout Pinterest images tend to be taller. Pinterest recommends a 2:3 ratio or 1000x1500 pixels for Pin ads. You can make taller images; however, you should maintain that ratio.

What does your business do and where do you have expertise? An account could publish “How to prepare for tax time.” A fitness instructor could post “How to work out while travelling.” A clothing boutique could share “How to tie one scarf 10 different ways.”

Use all the space a tall graphic provides to communicate interesting or valuable information from top to bottom.

2. Use Trending Colors

Pinterest puts out a report annually called “Pinterest Predicts,” and in that report they mention the colors that will be trending in the new year. For 2025, for example, they named Cherry Red, Butter Yellow, Aura Indigo, Dill Green, and Alpine Oat as the colors that will resonate. For 2024, the colors were Gummy Pink, Desert Orange, Aqua Blue, Moss Green, and Mocha Brown.

According to a review of over 500,000 Pinterest images by a company called Curalate, using multiple dominant colors in a Pin can make it over three times more likely to get shared or “re-pinned.” While there is a certain aesthetic to monochromatic Pins to stand out in the feed, your Pin should have more than a single dominant color. Also, red and orange Pins tend to get noticed more than blue ones.

In terms of color saturation, Pins with images that are too dark or too light are more often passed over. Keep the lighting and saturation of your Pin colors somewhere in the middle, around 50% saturation.

3. Show Less Faces, More Things

Pins with people’s faces don’t tend to fare well – unless, of course, it is the face of a celebrity or other popular personality. Because people who use Pinterest tend to look for inspiration for planning or shopping, a person’s face may not attract attention.

There are exceptions to this tip. For example, if the Pin is about a makeup product or makeup technique, a face with the makeup clearly visible makes sense. But chances are, images of the makeup itself will be pinned more often.

4. Pin Popular Pins

There are several benefits to finding and pinning popular pins to help boost your Pinterest engagement. The first is obvious: If it is popular, chances are it will help you attract attention and get re-pinned from your account.

The other benefit is that you can examine more closely what makes Pins popular. Notice the layout, the use of color, even the visual textures as well as the content including the choice of words and fonts on the image.

5. Peruse Pinterest for Business

Pinterest has a section of its website specifically to provide businesses with guidance on leveraging all the platform has to offer (business.pinterest.com). Learn from case studies, called Success Stories, that outline how other businesses are using Pinterest. Explore Pinterest advertising resources to gain insights on how to improve your Pins, even if you aren’t planning to spend ad dollars yet.

Finally, check out Pinterest’s Creator Hub or watch Pinterest’s webinars, part of their Pinterest Academy, where they give tutorials as well as trend predictions. If you sell products online, set up your own Pinterest shop to sell products directly from your Pinterest Pins.

As you can see, there are many ways you can tap into trends to enhance how you’re Using Pinterest. While it may be tempting to follow every trend you identify, always keep your brand image in mind as well as your target audience and your business goals.