How to take a passport photo at home
A modern phone camera is more than good enough for a passport photo. Almost every rejection comes down to the setup around the camera rather than the camera itself — where you stand, what is behind you, and where the light comes from.
Find the right wall
You want a plain, light, matte wall with nothing on it. Cream, pale grey and white all work for most countries. Avoid anything textured, glossy or patterned, and check for light switches and skirting boards creeping into frame.
Stand about half a metre away from it. This is the single most useful thing on this page. Standing right against the wall throws a hard shadow behind your head, which is one of the most common reasons a photo is refused. A bit of distance lets the shadow fall out of frame.
Get the light right
Face a window with indirect daylight — bright but not direct sun. Soft, even light from the front fills in the shadows under your eyes, nose and chin.
Things to avoid:
- Overhead lights on their own. They cast shadows in your eye sockets and under your nose.
- Direct sunlight. It makes you squint and blows out one side of your face.
- Flash, especially close up. It causes red eye and hard shadows, and reflects off glasses.
- Mixed lighting — a warm lamp on one side and cool daylight on the other gives you two different skin tones across one face.
Overcast days are genuinely the best conditions for this.
Set up the camera
Get someone else to take it if you can. A selfie taken at arm's length distorts your features: the nose comes out larger and the ears smaller, because the camera is too close. Some automated checkers detect this.
- Camera at eye level, not above or below.
- About 1.5 to 2 metres away, zoomed in slightly if you need to fill the frame. Distance flattens the perspective and makes your face look like itself.
- Use the rear camera — it is markedly better than the front one on every phone.
- Turn off beauty filters, skin smoothing and portrait mode. Portrait mode artificially blurs the background, which counts as digital alteration and can produce strange halos around your hair.
If you must take it alone, prop the phone up and use a timer rather than holding it out.
Pose
- Face straight at the camera, shoulders square.
- Neutral expression, mouth closed. A natural smile is allowed in the US but not in most other countries, so a neutral face is the safer default.
- Both eyes open and clearly visible, with no hair across them.
- Nothing covering your face. Head coverings are usually only permitted for religious or medical reasons, and your full face must still be visible from the bottom of the chin to the top of the forehead.
- Take glasses off. The US has not permitted them since 2016, and everywhere else glare or frames across the eyes will get the photo refused. There is no advantage to keeping them on.
- Wear something that contrasts with the wall. A white shirt against a white wall merges into the background, which Canada explicitly warns about.
Check before you commit
Take a dozen and pick the best. Then look for:
- Shadows on your face or on the wall behind you
- Reflections, if you kept glasses on
- Hair covering an eye or an eyebrow
- The top of your head cropped off
- Anyone else in the frame
Then run it through the editor, which measures your face and sizes the photo to your country's specification, and tells you if the head height, sharpness or background evenness look wrong before you print anything.
One last thing
The photo has to be recent — within the last month for the UK, six months for most other countries — and has to look like you do now. A flattering photo from two years ago is not worth the rejection.
Make a passport photo — free, and your photo never leaves your device.