How to Take Your Own Passport Photo at Home

1. Pick your wall

Almost every country requires a plain, evenly lit background — most often white, off-white, or light grey (a few, like France and the Netherlands, specifically require light grey or blue and reject white). Find a wall with no texture, artwork, light switches, or door frames behind you. Stand about a foot away from it so no shadow falls on the wall behind your head.

2. Get the light right

Face a window during the day rather than using an overhead light — overhead light casts shadows under your eyes and nose, which is one of the most common causes of rejection. Avoid direct sun (it causes harsh shadows and blown-out highlights) and avoid your phone's flash (it causes red-eye and glare on glasses). Overcast daylight through a window is close to ideal.

3. Set up the camera

Prop your phone at roughly eye level — resting it on a stack of books works fine — rather than holding it and shooting up or down at yourself. Shooting from below exaggerates your chin and neck; from above, it distorts your forehead. Have someone else take the photo if possible; if it's a selfie, use the timer so you're not visibly holding the phone with an outstretched arm in frame.

4. Get your expression right

Neutral expression, mouth closed, both eyes open, looking directly at the camera — this is near-universal across every country's rules. A handful of countries (the US among them) explicitly allow a natural smile as an alternative to neutral, but "neutral" is the safe default everywhere. Remove glasses if you can — most countries either ban them outright or require the lenses to show zero glare and zero tint, which is hard to guarantee from a phone camera.

5. Check for the usual rejection causes

• Hair falling across your eyes or forehead
• A head covering that isn't for religious or medical reasons
• Shadows on the background from the light source
• A photo that's more than 6 months old (some countries require even more recent — Mexico requires within 30 days, the UK within 1 month)
• Low resolution or visible compression artifacts from a low-quality camera or a screenshot of a screenshot

6. Crop it to the exact spec

This is the part that's genuinely hard to do by eye — head-height percentage, eye-line position, and exact pixel or millimeter dimensions vary by country and by document type, and most photo apps crop to a generic square or portrait ratio rather than your specific document's requirement.