2,197 main images from Kaufland and Allegro. They look white. The eyedropper disagrees.
We measured the background, crop and resolution of the main image on 2,197 product pages in Germany and Poland. Keep scrolling and you will see all of them at once.
First, test your eye. Which background is pure white 255?
Photo: marszalstudio for urbanNŌTE. Backgrounds 251, 254 and 247 are simulated.
This is how we measured each image. A strip along the edge gives the background colour. The product outline shows how much of the square search-results tile it fills. Add the pixel size of the file and the shadow.
We draw the tile from these measurements. We do not show the listing photos themselves: the rights belong to the sellers.
Each tile is a real main image from a product page, drawn from measurements. The yellow frame is our candle.
Kaufland.pl 837, Kaufland.de 1,004, Allegro 356. Archived copies from the Internet Archive, April to October 2026. Hover or tap a tile.
Now we place them on the white page of the store. An image with a 255 background disappears and only the product remains. That is how a tile in search results should look.
You cannot see the difference between 255 and 252 with the naked eye. Shoppers only see it next to pure white: as a grey frame around the product.
That is the share of light backgrounds on Kaufland with pure white 255 along the entire edge. One main image in nine has no white 255 in the file at all.
Magnifier ×30. Kaufland.de and Kaufland.pl together, 1,841 images.
That is the share of images Allegro re-encodes on its own servers. In the process, pure white 255 turns into stripes of 254 and 255. This is not the sellers' fault: before upload they keep white just as clean as on Kaufland.
Magnifier ×30. 356 listings on Allegro.
In the square search-results tile, one product in four fills less than half the area. Sellers crop tightly, but only 21% of main images are square: the rest are cropped to the shape of the product.
That is the share of main images on Kaufland that meet four basic rules at once: white 255, no shadow, product filling at least 85% of the tile and at least 1,000 pixels.
With the 2,048 pixels on the long side that Kaufland recommends: one in eight. The median is 1,500 pixels.
That is how many images a typical product page has on Kaufland.de (8 in Poland) and a typical Allegro listing. On Allegro, one listing in six has a single image.
Medians. Yellow tiles: pages with a single image.
That is how many product pages on Kaufland.de have a video in the gallery. In Poland it is one in 837, on the same Kaufland. If you also sell in Poland, almost nobody competes with video there.
Excluding series from a single manufacturer, 3.2% of pages in Germany.
The numbers from the charts as a table
| Metric | Kaufland.pl | Kaufland.de | Kaufland total | Allegro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| main images | 837 | 1,004 | 1,841 | 356 |
| pure white 255 along the edge, among light backgrounds | 60.4% | 65.3% | 63.0% | 11.4%* |
| white 255 in the file (typical edge pixel), among light backgrounds | 86.8% | 89.6% | 88.4% | 26.6%* |
| background 250-254, white to the eye, among light backgrounds | 8.9% | 5.8% | 7.3% | 67.7%* |
| greyish or creamy background (below 250) | 4.2% | 4.5% | 4.4% | 5.7% |
| square crop (1:1) | 25.3% | 17.7% | 21.2% | 50.9% |
| product fills less than half the square tile | 27.0% | 24.3% | 25.6% | 32.8% |
| long side at least 2,048 px | 16.4% | 22.1% | 19.5% | 24.2% |
| long side below 1,000 px | 22.2% | 17.6% | 19.7% | 29.3% |
| four rules at once (255, no shadow, 85% of the tile, 1,000 px) | 46.7% | 51.5% | 49.3% | - |
| median gallery images | 8 | 9 | - | 4 |
| pages with video | 1 | 55 | 56 | - |
* Allegro re-encodes 95% of images and turns part of the pure white into stripes of 254 and 255. White 254-255 appears on 93.4% of light backgrounds of new Allegro listings, the same as on Kaufland (93.3%). Allegro: new listings, 273 of 356.
Source: marszalstudio study, 2,197 main images from product pages on Kaufland.de, Kaufland.pl and Allegro, October 2026. Download the data (CSV)
01Explore
Every tile is a main image. Filter, sort and check each one.
Tap a tile to see its measurements and a link to the archived product page in the Internet Archive. Every number in this study can be checked here image by image.
2,197 images · Tiles from the whitest background. The magnifier amplifies every departure from white 255.
Tap a tile to see its measurements and a link to the archived copy.
Allegro re-encodes images, so pure white is understated there and we do not score the rules.
02Your image
Check your main image. The same measurement as in the study, compared with 1,841 images from Kaufland.
Drop the file you upload as the first image. The measurement runs in your browser: the file is not sent anywhere.
The magnifier darkens every pixel that is not 255. Pure white stays white.
White 255, no shadow, product filling at least 85% of the tile and at least 1,000 px. All four are met by 49% of main images on Kaufland, with 2,048 px by 12%.
03Takeaways
What this means for sellers. Five rules you can check with an eyedropper.
- 7.3%
Check white with an eyedropper, not your eye. A 250-254 background looks white, but on the white store page it leaves a grey frame around the product. That is 7.3% of light backgrounds on Kaufland.
- 21%
Crop the main image to a square. Search results put it in a square tile, but only 21% of images are square: that is why one product in four fills less than half the tile.
- 19.5%
Export 2,048 pixels on the long side. Kaufland recommends it, and only one main image in five has it. The median is 1,500 pixels.
- 13.5%
Shadows belong in the gallery, not in the main image. Kaufland's guidelines forbid it there, yet one main image in seven has one.
- 1 of 837
If you also sell on Kaufland.pl, upload a video. In Poland, one product page in 837 has a video, in Germany 55 of 1,004.
We shoot main images to these rules in our Warsaw studio and check the background with an eyedropper before we deliver the files. See packshots
04For editors
Data and charts ready to publish. No need to ask, just credit the source.
The data and charts are licensed under CC BY 4.0: you may publish and adapt them, including in commercial articles, with credit to the source.
Quotable sentences
Among main images with a light, plain background on Kaufland, 88% contain white RGB 255, 255, 255 in the file, but only 63% have pure white along the entire edge.
One main image with a light background in nine (11.6%) has no white 255 in the file: 7.3% have a 250-254 background, indistinguishable from white to the naked eye, and 4.4% are visibly greyish or creamy.
Only one main image in five on Kaufland is square (21%), so in the square search-results tile one product in four (26%) fills less than half the area.
Only one main image in five (19.5%) has the 2,048 pixels on the long side that Kaufland recommends, and just as many (19.7%) have fewer than 1,000 pixels.
Every second main image on Kaufland (49%) meets all the basic rules at once (white 255, no shadow, product filling at least 85% of the tile, 1,000 pixels), and one in eight (12%) also has the recommended 2,048 pixels.
Allegro re-encodes 95% of images, turning pure white 255 into invisible stripes of 254 and 255 on two thirds of white backgrounds.
A product video in the gallery appears on 55 of 1,004 product pages on Kaufland.de (5.5%) and on one of 837 on Kaufland.pl.
A typical product page shows 9 images on Kaufland.de, 8 on Kaufland.pl and 4 on Allegro, where one listing in six has a single image.
Data
2,197 rows, one main image per row: platform, category, dimensions, background colour and class, product outline, shadow, number of gallery images, video and the address of the archived copy in the Internet Archive. Column descriptions are below in the methodology.
Download the data (CSV)How to credit
marszalstudio study: 2,197 main images from Kaufland.de, Kaufland.pl and Allegro, October 2026, marszalstudio.pl
Press contact
Questions about the method, data in a different breakdown or a comment from a photographer's point of view: kontakt@marszalstudio.pl, +48 786 966 333.
Charts 16:9, 2400 × 1350 px
Fig. 1. Pure white 255 along the edge: 1,841 main images from Kaufland under the white magnifier
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Fig. 2. Allegro: 356 main images under the white magnifier, after the platform re-encodes them
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Fig. 3. Product in the square search-results tile: one in four fills less than half
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Fig. 4. Four basic rules at once are met by 49% of main images on Kaufland
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Fig. 5. Number of gallery images: Kaufland.pl, Kaufland.de and Allegro
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Fig. 6. Video in the gallery: 1 page on Kaufland.pl, 55 on Kaufland.de
05Methodology
How we measured. And what these numbers do not say.
Where the images come from
Kaufland: product pages from the Internet Archive, 1,004 from Kaufland.de (April to October 2026) and 837 from Kaufland.pl (July to October 2026). From each page we take the main image, the first one in the gallery, and download its original version from Kaufland's public image server (9 October 2026, 1,779 distinct files).
Allegro: 356 listings from Internet Archive copies, April to October 2026, main image file from the Allegro server. The number of gallery images on Allegro comes from the full study of 696 listings.
How we measure the background
We measure the background colour at the edge of the image, in a strip 3% of the short side wide, away from the product and its shadow. That is where the image meets the white store page. Pure white means at least 99% of edge pixels are exactly 255, 255, 255.
The 250 threshold is deliberate: a 250 background differs from 255 by 1.7 units of lightness L*, while the threshold of perception is about 2.3. So a 250-254 background is white to the eye, while 245 already shows as a grey rectangle. We also checked that JPEG compression alone does not turn 255 into 254: a flat white background stays at 255 at every quality from 50 to 100.
Crop, resolution and shadow
The product is everything that does not belong to the background flooded in from the edge. From its outline we calculate how much of the square tile it fills, as in Kaufland search results. An image is square when its sides differ by no more than 1%. Resolution is the pixel size of the file.
We look for a shadow in a strip directly under the product. We checked the automation by eye on 120 images: the background class matches in 93.3%, the product outline in 90.5% and the shadow in 83.7%. That is why for shadows we give the visual-check figure (13.5%) and treat the automated one as an upper estimate.
Limitations
This is not a random sample of all of Kaufland or Allegro: the Internet Archive saves popular and linked pages more often, and some manufacturers are clustered. Sellers may have replaced the image since it was archived.
For white and transparent products on a white background the outline is sometimes too small and the tile fill too low. On Allegro, re-encoding understates pure white, so there we compare white 254-255.
Data to download
CSV file, one row per main image. Columns: platform, category, new_offer, width_px, height_px, background_class (0 pure 255, 1 255 mixed, 2 250-254, 3 240-249, 4 below 240, 5 scene or colour), background_r, background_g, background_b, product_x0-product_y1 (outline as a fraction of the image), shadow_auto, product_long_side_in_tile, product_area_in_tile, gallery_images, video, archive_url. Missing measurement: empty field.
Licence CC BY 4.0.
Who made the study
marszalstudio, a product photography studio in Warsaw. We shoot main images for marketplaces every day and ask ourselves about white 255 at every session. Study, measurements and this page: the marszalstudio team, October 2026.
Get in touch
We are here to help.
- Call+48 786 966 333Your coordinator answers, Mon-Fri 8:00-16:00 CET
- Emailkontakt@marszalstudio.plWe usually reply within 2 business hours.
- Visit the studioul. Konstancińska 2, 2nd floor02-942 Warsaw · Mon-Fri 8:00-16:00
