Head coverings in passport photos

The short answer

Every authority we checked allows a head covering worn for religious or medical reasons, and none of them allows one worn for any other reason. The one exception on this site is France, whose own page requires a bare head — no hat, scarf or headband — and names no religious carve-out in that instruction, so check with the office you are applying to before you rely on one. A hijab, a turban, a kippah, a headwrap or a wig worn during treatment is an ordinary photograph to submit. A baseball cap, a beanie or a hood is not, whatever your hair is doing that morning.

The UK puts it on the list of things the photo must not do:

"not have a head covering (unless it's for religious or medical reasons)" — GOV.UK, photo requirements

The permission covers the reason, not the coverage. It softens none of the other rules, and three of those are where head-covering photos come unstuck: what the fabric hides, what it shadows, and how it reads against the background. All three are fixable before you press the shutter and none afterwards, in software.

What has to stay visible

Across this set the face has to be visible from the bottom of the chin to the forehead. The UK puts it bluntly: the photo must "not have anything covering your face", and must run from the crown of your head to your chin. That gives you four edges to keep clear:

• The chin. The bottom of it, not the point where the fabric meets it. A scarf pinned high under the jaw hides the landmark the head height is measured from.
• The forehead. Leave a margin of it rather than resting the fabric on your eyebrows. If the edge sits low, push it back a centimetre or two before the shot.
• Both sides of the face. The outline has to be findable on the left and the right. The Netherlands publishes a face width rule of 16–20 mm ear to ear alongside its 26–30 mm head height, and you cannot measure a width whose edges are buried in cloth. That is our reading of the width rule, not a published rule about coverings.
• The whole face, uninterrupted. A veil across the nose or mouth is the one thing none of these authorities accommodates. If you normally wear one, the photograph is taken without.

Everything else the covering may do: no authority we could read requires visible ears.

The shadow the covering casts

The UK requires that the photo "not have any shadows on your face or behind you". A covering with a firm edge above the brow — a turban, a stiffened headband, a pinned scarf — behaves like a small brim under a ceiling light and lays a band of shadow across the eye sockets. On a phone screen that reads as depth; at the size the photo is judged at, it reads as an obstruction.

The fix is light, not editing. Face a window so the light comes at you rather than from above, keep a plain wall about a metre behind you so your own shadow falls out of frame, and add a second soft source on the other side to open the eye sockets back up. Shadows and lighting in a passport photo goes through the setups.

Fabric gathered under the chin makes a second shadow, a dark trough exactly where the chin ends, blurring the point the head height is measured from. Tuck it flatter and take another frame.

Contrast against the background

This is the trap specific to head coverings, and it catches people who have done everything else right. GOV.UK requires the photo to be taken against a plain cream or light grey background and to "be in clear contrast to the background". A cream hijab against a cream wall satisfies the first clause and fails the second. Because the required background colour differs by country, the same covering behaves differently in each:

If you own the covering in more than one colour, this decides which you wear: a mid-tone separates cleanly from every background in that table. If you only have the pale one, change the wall instead. Passport photo background colour has the full country list, and the background checker measures what your wall actually is, which is rarely what it looks like.

Where the head height gets measured

Head height runs from the bottom of the chin to the crown: 29–34 mm on the UK's 35 × 45 mm print, 25–35 mm on the US 2 × 2 in, 26–30 mm in the Netherlands, 31–36 mm on Canada's 50 × 70 mm. A covering changes where the top of your head is.

None of the pages we could read states whether that measurement runs to the top of the fabric or to the skull underneath, and we will not guess at a rule an authority has not published. What we can tell you is what a measuring tool does: it measures what it can see, so with a covering on, the top of the head is the top of the fabric. Treat that as the conservative reading.

So keep the covering close to the skull, moving a knot or a pinned fold to the back rather than the top, and leave extra headroom when you shoot so there is something to crop into. Head size in a passport photo explains where the ranges come from.

The United States and the signed statement

The United States asks for something the others do not: a piece of paper submitted with the application explaining why the covering is there. For religious wear it is a signed statement from you that the covering is traditional religious attire worn continuously in public; for a medical covering, a signed statement from a doctor that it is worn daily for medical reasons. It travels with the paper application, the DS-11 you hand over in person or the DS-82 you post.

Two caveats. The State Department's site blocks automated reading, so this is a summary rather than a quotation; read the State Department's photo page directly, because that page is what the decision is made against and this one is not. And if you are renewing online rather than on paper, we could not verify where the statement goes. Ask before you submit, not after.

While you are on the US rules: the background is white or off-white, glasses have not been accepted since November 2016, and a closed-mouth smile is allowed, which makes the United States the only authority here that permits one. The US passport photo tool works to the 2 × 2 in format and the 25–35 mm head range.

France says the head must be bare

France is the exception in our set, and it is worth being precise rather than reassuring. The government's own identity photo page states:

"La tête doit être nue (pas de chapeau, foulard ou serre-tête par exemple)." — service-public.gouv.fr

The head must be bare: no hat, scarf or headband. The page names no religious or medical exception, and we will not invent one for it. France also requires the photograph to come from a professional photographer or an approved ePhoto booth, so there is a person or an official machine between you and the file. Raise it there, or with the mairie handling your application, and take their answer over any summary online, this one included.

Where a photographer takes the shot

Several authorities take the shot out of your hands, which changes who to ask.

• Canada requires a commercial photographer and a stamp on the back, so a home print cannot satisfy it and the covering, lighting and background are settled in the studio. Rules on the Government of Canada's photo page.
• Germany has accepted only digital photos since 1 May 2025, taken at the authority or sent in by the photographer.
• Italy runs submissions through software that rejects automatically with no operator override, so a shadow a clerk might have waved through will not be.
• Ireland accepts selfies through Passport Online, four identical prints on the paper route, and bans uniforms outright — a separate rule that catches people assuming a work headscarf and a work uniform are treated alike.
• Mexico will not take a photo more than 30 days old, the strictest recency rule we found.

Shooting it

Wear the covering the way you normally wear it, then make four adjustments: pull the front edge off the forehead, tuck the fabric flatter under the chin, smooth the crown, move any knot to the back. Stand a metre off a plain wall, face the light, take a dozen frames. Taking a passport photo with an iPhone covers the camera side; the at-home checklist is the one to keep open while you shoot.

Then measure it rather than judging it. Our checker crops to any of 82 official formats, reports head height and eye line in millimetres against the published range, and flags sharpness, exposure, shadow and background separation. It does not retouch your face, smooth the fabric or replace what is behind you, because the authorities above have written that out. When the crop is right it tiles a 4 × 6 sheet at true size with the real DPI in the file, all in your browser with no upload, no account and no limit. The free iOS app, Passport Photo: Photo Maker ID, gives one free export before it asks for Pro; the website is the unlimited one.

Neither can promise an acceptance. The issuing authority decides, and any tool claiming otherwise is describing something it does not control. What a tool can do is make sure the covering is not the thing anyone notices. Why passport photos get rejected covers the rest of the list.