How do I make a Pinterest board private?

Open the board, click the ellipsis, choose Edit info and settings and turn on Make this board private. When creating a new board, turn on Keep this board private. Only you and anyone you invite can see it.

How do I delete a Pinterest board?

Open the board, click the ellipsis, choose Edit board, then Delete and confirm with Delete forever. All pins on the board are deleted with it. You have seven days to restore it from the Recently deleted section on desktop or Android.

Is it better to archive or delete a board?

Archive when the board is off-topic but you might want the pins back. It disappears from your public profile and you cannot save to it, but you can unarchive any time. Delete when you want it gone, since the pins go with it.

How many boards should I have?

Start with five to ten boards named for the searches your content answers, with a sentence of description each. Add a board when you have enough pins to fill it, not before. The limit is 2,000 boards per account, which nobody needs.

Do board followers transfer when I merge boards?

No. Pinterest's help page says the followers of the merged board will not transfer to the new board. The pins move and the source board is deleted, and there is no undo.

Pinterest boards: how to create, name, organize, hide and delete them

Updated October 22, 2026 · 7 min read

Why boards matter for search

Pinterest reads the board a pin sits on as part of what the pin is about. A pin on "Small Bathroom Storage Ideas" has a clearer meaning to Pinterest than the same pin on "Home Stuff". Boards also have their own pages that can rank in Pinterest search and on Google, with a title, a description and a cover.

That makes boards a setup task you do once and benefit from with every pin. Get the names right, give each a description, keep them on topic, and the pins you add later start with a clearer signal.

How many boards to start with

Five to ten. Each one should be named for a search people run and for content you actually have. A food blog might start with boards for its main categories: weeknight dinners, meal prep, baking, soups, holiday recipes. A home decor account might split by room and by style.

Add a board when you have ten or more pins to fill it. An empty board with a good name does nothing, and a profile full of boards with two pins each looks abandoned. Pinterest allows up to 2,000 boards per account, including group boards you did not create, and up to 200,000 pins. Those are limits, not targets.

Naming boards for keywords

Board names are limited to 50 characters. Use the words people search, in the order they search them, and skip the clever ones. "Fall Porch Decor" is a search; "Autumn Vibes" is not.

Three checks for each name:

Is it a search term? Put it in the keyword tool. If there is no volume for the phrase or anything close, rename it.
Is it specific? "Recipes" competes with every food account on Pinterest. "Easy Chicken Dinner Recipes" competes with far fewer and matches a real search.
Does it describe the pins? If half the pins on the board do not fit the name, you have two boards.

Give every board a description. It is a sentence or two that says what the board is for in plain language with the search term and two or three related ones. The board names and descriptions guide has examples by niche.

Creating a board

On the web: click the plus icon in the left navigation, choose Board, enter a name, and click Create. In the app: tap the plus icon, tap Board, enter a name, tap Create. You can also create a board while saving a pin, using Create board from the board picker.

At creation you can add collaborators and set the board to private. Both can be changed later.

Sections

Sections organize pins within a board. A "Holiday Recipes" board might have sections for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve. Open the board, click the plus icon, choose Section, and name it. To move existing pins, use Organize at the top of the board, select the pins, choose Move and pick the section. Drag sections and pins to reorder them.

Sections are for people browsing the board. The board name and description carry the search signal, so a well-named board with sections beats several thin boards.

Private boards

Pinterest's current name for secret boards is private boards. Its help page says: "Only you (and anyone you invite) can see your private boards."

To make a new board private, turn on Keep this board private when you name it. To make an existing board private on the web, open the board, click the ellipsis, choose Edit info and settings, turn on Make this board private and click Done. The app follows the same steps from the board's settings. Turn the toggle off to make the board public again.

What private means in practice:

Pins you save to a private board do not notify the original pinner and do not add to the pin's save count.
Private boards and their pins cannot be promoted as ads.
Your home feed may show suggestions based on your private boards. Those suggestions are visible only to you.

Use private boards for drafts, for pins you are collecting for a future board, and for anything personal on a business account. Pins on a private board do not help your account rank, so move them to a public board when they are ready.

Archive, delete or merge

These three do different things. Pick the one that matches what you want to happen to the pins and the followers.

Action	Pins	Followers	Visible on profile	Reversible
Archive	Kept; you cannot save new pins to it	Kept	No, shown at the bottom of your profile	Yes, unarchive any time
Delete	Deleted with the board	Lost	No	Seven days, from Recently deleted
Merge	Moved to the destination board; source board deleted	Not transferred	Destination only	No

Delete

"When you delete a board, all the Pins on the board are deleted, too." On the web, open the board, click the ellipsis, choose Edit board, click Delete at the bottom left and confirm with Delete forever. In the app, open the board, tap the ellipsis, choose Edit board, scroll to Delete and confirm.

You have seven days to restore a deleted board from the Recently deleted section. Restoring works on desktop and Android; business accounts can restore only on desktop. On the web, go to your Saved tab, find Recently deleted boards, click Restore Boards, pick the board and click Restore.

Merge

Merging moves every pin from one board into another and deletes the source board. On the web, open the board, click the ellipsis, choose Merge, pick the destination board and confirm with Move Pins and Delete Board. You can also drag one board onto the center of another. Sections merge the same way from the section's menu.

Two things to know before you confirm. "The followers of the merged board will not transfer to the new board." And there is no undo: to reverse a merge you create a new board and move the pins back one by one. If you merge a private board into a public one, the pins take the destination's setting and become public.

Merge is for two boards that cover the same topic. If one of them has followers, merge the smaller into the larger.

Board covers

A board cover is the image shown on your profile for that board. Set it from the board's edit settings, choosing one of the pins on the board. A cover with readable text and a consistent style across boards makes the profile easier to scan. A matching color set across your pins helps; the color palette tool builds one from a photo or brand color.

Collaborators and group boards

Adding collaborators to a board turns it into a group board. Collaborators can save pins to it, and the board appears on their profiles too. You can invite people at creation or later from the board's settings.

Group boards were a growth tactic years ago, when pins on a big group board reached everyone who followed it. That is no longer how distribution works. A group board can still be useful for a team or a community, but it is not a way to get your pins seen, and pins on off-topic group boards dilute the signal about what your account is for. If you want to find or list one, the group board directory exists for that.

Cleaning up an old account

An account that has been collecting pins since 2014 usually has dozens of boards that have nothing to do with what you do now. Here is the order that works.

List every board and mark it keep, archive or delete. Keep anything on topic with real pins. Archive anything off topic that you might want. Delete empty boards and boards of nothing but other people's pins on topics you will never cover.
Make personal boards private rather than deleting them. Recipes you cook, rooms you like, trips you plan: private boards keep them without affecting the account.
Merge duplicates into the board with more followers, remembering the followers of the other one do not move.
Rename the keepers for search and write a description for each.
Set covers so the profile reads as one account with one subject.
Leave group boards that are off topic. Leaving removes the board from your profile without affecting anyone else.
Check the profile against the profile guide: name, bio, claimed site, and the first row of boards being the ones that matter most.

Do this in one sitting rather than over weeks, then leave the structure alone and spend the time on fresh pins.

Where to go next

Frequently asked questions

How do I make a Pinterest board private?: Open the board, click the ellipsis, choose Edit info and settings and turn on Make this board private. When creating a new board, turn on Keep this board private. Only you and anyone you invite can see it.
How do I delete a Pinterest board?: Open the board, click the ellipsis, choose Edit board, then Delete and confirm with Delete forever. All pins on the board are deleted with it. You have seven days to restore it from the Recently deleted section on desktop or Android.
Is it better to archive or delete a board?: Archive when the board is off-topic but you might want the pins back. It disappears from your public profile and you cannot save to it, but you can unarchive any time. Delete when you want it gone, since the pins go with it.
How many boards should I have?: Start with five to ten boards named for the searches your content answers, with a sentence of description each. Add a board when you have enough pins to fill it, not before. The limit is 2,000 boards per account, which nobody needs.
Do board followers transfer when I merge boards?: No. Pinterest's help page says the followers of the merged board will not transfer to the new board. The pins move and the source board is deleted, and there is no undo.