DIY Headshots

HeadshotDB Headshot Census · October 2026

Therapist headshots: what 989 therapists actually wear and use

Across 989 therapist profile photos on Psychology Today, 40% use a plain backdrop and 27% an outdoor setting with greenery. 63% wear business casual and 15% a suit or blazer. 68% smile with their teeth showing, and 40% of the photos are snapshots or selfies rather than professional portraits.

Backdrop

Setting
  • Plain backdrop40%
  • Outdoors, greenery27%
  • At home18%
  • Office6%
  • Other5%
  • Outdoors, street5%
Backdrop colour, where plain
  • Light grey20%
  • Beige15%
  • Grey13%
  • White11%
  • Brown9%
  • Black6%

The most common settings are a plain backdrop (40%) and an outdoor setting with greenery (27%). Where the backdrop is plain, it’s most often light grey, then beige. A therapist’s office, which you might expect, is rare.

Clothing

Top layer
  • Blouse or dressy top30%
  • Blazer16%
  • Sweater15%
  • Collared shirt15%
  • Plain top or T-shirt11%
  • Cardigan5%
Colour
  • Black28%
  • Blue13%
  • White12%
  • Brown or beige10%
  • Red or pink9%
  • Green8%

Therapists most often wear a blouse or dressy top (30%) or a blazer (16%). Black leads the colours at 28%. Cardigans, often thought of as the therapist look, are uncommon.

What’s worn together

Backdrop and top layer together, 591 professionally taken photos
  • Plain backdrop · Blouse or dressy top17%
  • Plain backdrop · Blazer12%
  • Outdoors, greenery · Blouse or dressy top9%
  • Plain backdrop · Collared shirt8%
  • Plain backdrop · Sweater7%
  • Outdoors, greenery · Blazer5%

Our Therapist & coach look offers the most common of these as styles to choose from, each labelled with how common it is, plus the therapists’ three most common colours.

Expression and framing

Expression
  • Smile, teeth showing68%
  • Closed-mouth smile24%
  • Neutral9%
Framing
  • Chest up61%
  • Head and shoulders30%
  • Waist up or wider10%

68% smile with teeth showing. Most photos are framed chest up, and 72% face the camera square on.

40% are snapshots

A large share of therapists use a phone snapshot, a selfie or a photo cropped from somewhere else. On a directory where clients compare a page of faces side by side, a well-lit portrait is one of the few ways to stand out before anyone reads a word.

The therapist look, from a selfie

We built our Therapist & coach look from these numbers (simple top, warm plain backdrop). Here it is on 4 fictional people, each made from one phone selfie.

Example selfieThe same person in the therapist look
Example selfieThe same person in the therapist look
Example selfieThe same person in the therapist look
Example selfieThe same person in the therapist look

Examples are fictional people, not therapists from the study.

Make yours in the therapist look

How we measured

  • We read the first five listing pages of Psychology Today’s therapist directory in 10 states (California, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Georgia, Colorado, Washington, Ohio and Massachusetts) in October 2026: 989 photos. Directory order is Psychology Today’s, so this is a sample of listed therapists, not a random one.
  • Each photo was labelled by an AI vision model for presentation only: setting, clothing, colour, expression, framing, pose and whether it looks professionally taken. Backdrop colour was measured from the pixels. The model was told not to infer gender, race, age or identity, and had no field to record them. Labels weren’t checked by hand, so treat small differences with caution.
  • We kept only the totals on this page. Names were dropped when the listings were read, and no photo, link or face data was stored.