Looking to create a backdrop to use for your Youtube videos or Facebook Livestreams? In this video we cover backdrop ideas and tips to help you set up a backdrop that you love.
🕒Timestamps🕒
1:32 Why you may be confused about your backdrop
2:19 What’s the best backdrop?
2:58 What Bobbi Brown (The Makeup Artist) can teach us about backdrops
3:44 Featured wall backdrop
5:25 Tips on framing your backdrop
6:36 Adding shelving
7:12 Adding props
8:19 Other backdrop options
9:26 Using a white wall
10:21 Removable backdrop wall art
11:55 Building a wall set
13:49 Using any space
📓Resources mentioned📓
3d Wall Art panels: https://amzn.to/3hsJgyq
Removable command strips: https://amzn.to/3fn1nE2
🔴Get your free Facebook Live Cheat Sheets🔴: https://saranguyenonline.com/special/facebook-live-cheat_sheets/
Best DIY Backdrop Ideas and Tips for Videos (Facebook Live and YouTube) – Video Transcription
In today’s live stream, we are looking at different backdrop ideas for your livestreams. This really is covering what are some of the best DIY backdrops or backgrounds that you can have, whether you’re looking to do Facebook live videos, YouTube videos, I’ll focus on live videos because live streaming is my jam, but you really can apply these to whether it’s your live streams or it’s your YouTube uploaded videos, or even your Facebook uploaded videos.
I’m going to talk about just different options that you can have some tips about them. Then we’re also going to look at some background rules. ‘Cause there are some background rules as far as I’m concerned.
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Sara Nguyen, and I help coaches, consultants and creative professionals build and grow their businesses, leveraging video on social media. Make sure you check out the links in the description because I’ll go back and I’ll add timestamps. You can reference those. I’ll also add links after the broadcast to any of the resources that I mentioned in this video.
Let’s talk about backdrops and backdrop rules. When I was putting together the content for this video, I wanted to bring you the best information possible. What I discovered and what you may have discovered is that you may have noticed that there’s a lot of conflicting information on what “the best” I’m trying to air quote, but I hit my microphone. What “the best” backdrop is. It’s conflicting because I saw videos where someone said, you need white, you need a minimalist backdrop because that’s more professional.
Then I saw in another video, someone said, no, you need a dark backdrop, because dark is more professional. Dark creates this, this type of, you know, professional look. It’s like, well, one person saying that, you know, minimalist and white is the best way to go. Another person’s saying is dark as the way to go. What’s the answer? The answer for you, and the answer for me is the back, the best backdrop is the one that you love and the one that you have and the one that you use, because I see a lot of people also use the backdrop as an excuse to not create videos. It’s like, “Oh, well, I can’t create a video unless I have the most beautifully, perfectly designed backdrop.” and that’s just not true. We know that’s not true.
You can use any space in the house and it’s not even about the perfect backdrop, the perfect room. It’s more about the content, but the backdrop is just one part of the equation. I think the other thing was when I was watching a makeup tutorial, ’cause this is very, very, very relevant by Bobby Brown, the makeup artist, not the musician and Bobby Brown was talking about lipstick. Lots of stuff about lipstick, lots of rules about skin tones and colour rules. And she said, how do you know if a lipstick is right for you? Her answer was, if you put it on and you like the look of it, then that’s the right one for you.
Exactly the same thing applies when it comes to your backdrop, your backdrop, in terms of the colours you choose, the props that you choose to have at the end of the day, if you are most comfortable with what you’ve got, that is the best backdrop for you, don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.
What I’m going to share with you today is these tips on creating the backdrops in different backdrop options for you. I wanted to talk first about breaking down the idea of having a backdrop as a featured wall. Like the one that you see behind me now. I’m going to break it down and draw, and should I show you exactly what I did to get this look? Just so you can have some ideas and you can see the thought process behind creating the featured wall.
I understand that not everyone is able to paint a wall and to add things onto a wall you may be renting, or you may just not want to actually paint a wall and have such a permanent permanent option, but I’m going to show you a couple of alternatives later on in the video. Lt’s go over to my iPad now and let’s break down the wall.
This is the backdrop that you see currently in all of my live streams and all of my YouTube videos at the moment. One idea, so this is a room in my house and I painted the wall. I chose the colour that I liked. Going back to Bobby Brown and her analogy, the best colour is the colour that you enjoy. This was just a colour that I really like the look of, it resonated with me. I went to the hardware store. I gave the paint guy in the paint section, the dimensions of the wall, and then he gave me the appropriate amount of paint, got some paint brushes and painted the wall. That was how I came up with the colour. That’s how we got the solid coloured background. I think it was two coats.
Don’t look too closely because I always notice like splotches where I’m like, I should probably paint over that again, but I can’t. That’s how we came up with the colour for the painted wall. The other thing to notice is, as I mentioned, it’s not about having a whole perfect room. It’s about having a space for your backdrop and focusing on the space that the camera can see.
The picture that you see on the iPad now, this is like not the whole scene. When it comes to what the camera actually sees, I’m zooming out. This is probably about what the camera sees. I zoom in so that people can’t see, you know, everything, every single other thing in the actual frame. Just focus on the section of the room or the wall that the camera will see. You’ll notice that it becomes a little bit less daunting because you don’t have to figure out how to design an entire house or an entire room.
It’s just this space that the camera will see. In terms of the pictures that I decided to add to the wall, you know, I get comments about, that’s a really cool picture of Star Wars. That’s a really cool picture of Wonder Woman. I’m like, yeah, these are the things that I like. Is it directly related to my tech tutorials? My social media training? No, but it’s stuff that I like. I like the look of them, and it’s a reflection of my personality. I like having it in the frame and in the shot. And that’s why I chose to have them there. In terms of how I chose to decorate the shelving, I love this shelving.
I saw the idea of it from Philip DeFranco, a really big YouTuber, if you don’t know who Philip DeFranco, my husband watches his videos pretty much every single day. I really liked what Philip DeFranco had, where he had, like these industrial type looking shelves with pipes. Then I went and found something that I liked and then I ordered this off eBay, but I’ve seen them on Amazon as well, and they’re essentially flat packed shelves with these pipes.
You can order them, they arrive in the mail and then you just bribe someone to put it on the wall for you, ideally someone who lives in your house. In terms of the props that we, that I put on the shelving, you know, once again, like these Funko pops, I like these characters because they resonate with me and they’re strong female characters in movies that I enjoyed and that’s why I added them there. There’s no science, there’s no psychology behind it other than I really liked it. That’s the way I chose to add them to the actual wall.
There’s some tech pieces here. Here’s an old camera. Why is that there? Well, I actually just put it there ’cause I need to put it somewhere and I didn’t want to put it on the shelf and like in a cupboard, so I wanted to put it there and that just has sat there for a little while.
All these other bits of pieces of tech, it really is just stuff that I like and I think that is at the end of the day, the rule of thumb, if you like it, add it to the wall and the right type of people resonate with it. If they don’t, then that’s okay as well. I am not too upset if you don’t like Wonder Woman or Star Wars. I think I like my backdrop and I like how it looks. That’s pretty much the breakdown, breaking down the wall of my backdrop and how it all came together.
Let’s go through now a couple of backdrop ideas and options from previous videos. I’ll also show you how it really, sometimes doesn’t even matter. Okay. This is a video and in this backdrop here, the backdrop is actually, this was actually filmed in a coworking space in Thailand when my husband and I were overseas. This wasn’t even a room in the coworking space, this was the coworking space. There was only one space. There wasn’t separate office rooms. I would just happen to be the only one in at that time. I just turn the camera to the side so that it framed me and the wall, like they’ve got blue, they’ve got green, they’ve got an owl on the wall, but it didn’t matter what mattered was the content. This is my message to you. Don’t get so caught up, use the space that you’ve got and create the content.
It’s more important that you create the content than you spend all your time trying to get the best backdrop. Okay. Let’s have a look at another example. This is another video, guess where this was taken? This was taken in the hotel room. I just use the wall in the hotel room and I created the video of an afternoon and nothing fancy, just a wall, and that’s okay too.
I saw someone in his media say that a white wall is a sign of an amateur, and I wanted to punch him in the face. It was like, excuse me, no, a white wall is completely fine. A sign of an amateur is not creating content because you don’t have a wall because you don’t have a space or you think you don’t have a space. That is the sign of an amateur. Thank you. Okay. I’ll get off my soapbox now.
Another example of how, you know, having the perfect design set and backdrop doesn’t really matter. It’s about the content because it’s what the camera sees. In this case, all they needed to see was a clean white wall. This one is one of my favourite removable non-permanent options for having a backdrop. You can see that there are these white type of panel-y things. I’m going to switch back to me. Then I need to remember to come back to the camera.
But what you saw there was these, what you see here, right? This is blowing out a little bit, these panels, they’re textured so they’re 3D and they come in all sorts of patterns. This one just happens to be this brick one, but I’ve also seen them come in like waves and a whole range of patterns.
There are squares, as you can see, and they come in this box in a box like this, and you get about 12 of them in a box. Then all you do is you attach them to the wall, using command strips which is a non-permanent, way of attaching things to the wall. It won’t destroy the wall.
Then you get, let’s go back to the computer here, the look of what you see here. You see these panel-y things that you can remove from the wall. It’s a nice texture and there’s lots of different designs and options that you can use as well. It’s, I’ll put a link to them. I got them on eBay. I’ve seen them on Amazon and they’re like 50 bucks a pack. I’ve seen them for a bit more expensive, but they’ve got such a variety and it creates a nice little look and I think it’s a great way of adding some personality to your backdrops.
The next one I want to talk about is this wallpaper. Now you may be saying, Sara wallpaper is a little bit permanent and my landlord or my landlady, not going to be happy if I wallpaper the wall. I hear you. What you see here is this wallpaper, but it’s not wallpapered to the wall. What I did was I created this set and all this was, was pieces that I got from the hardware store. What you see here is a large piece of wood and then two wood panels that I attached together. Well, I’ve got someone else to attach for me because and then with this wall, you can then wallpaper it with whatever pattern, whatever style you like, whatever wallpaper style you like. It’s a solid background and it’s not permanent. This is like a behind the scenes.
I originally planned to add pictures to the wall itself, but I never got around to it, and they just ended up in the corner and once again, it’s all about what the camera sees. Although this is like this messy in my view behind the scenes, all that people saw was the wall itself, the wallpaper, and then what I framed.
You really don’t need to focus on decorating an entire room because you don’t have to have the entire room in a shot. And once again, it’s all that content. That is one of the things that I was doing for quite a while, I had quite a few wallpaper, I think I had two or three different wallpapers. I don’t use this at the moment because I’ve got the permanent feature wall that you see now. But when I was renting, this is what I did. You know, kind of ghetto kind of fabulous MacGyver style at a wall, and used it as, you know, my backdrop in my scenes.
In terms of not needing something that is permanent, not needing something that is fully decked out. This is a video that I shot when I was on holidays. This is inside the hotel room at the Intercontinental Da Nang. I think the best hotel in the world, just a stunning hotel, everything from the beautiful architecture to the location, to the food, to the people, the best hotel. If you ever get a chance to go to Vietnam and get to be in Da Nang check out the Intercontinental hotel there. Stunning. Anyway, I digress.
You don’t need the perfect backdrop. You can use whatever space inspires you. I love this because I loved the colours. I loved how, you know, it was just this gorgeous black and the lines and the gold and I was like, Oh my goodness, what a chance to create a video using this backdrop that really, that I really liked the look of. Once again, using the space that you have, wherever that is, whether it’s just in a plain white wall or whether it is a beautiful space that you can, you know, that you’ve rented or that you are on holidays, and this happens to work for you.
It really doesn’t need to be an excuse for you not to create videos. That really is my message. Use the spaces that you’ve got. Don’t feel that you have to have the perfect space before you livestream. And look, there are lots of other options in terms of doing it yourself. I see people have lights, they light up a wall with different coloured lights. I see people use, like, dividers. I see people drape fabric and you can do that.
Like, don’t feel that you need permission from someone to say, in order to have the best backdrop, it needs to be this, it needs to be this, no, you choose and you evolve it over time. If you like the look of it, then that’s the one that’s right for you. We talked about quite a few things in the live stream today. We talked about the best backdrop, which really is the one that you’ve got.
We talked about backdrop rules, which is all about having a backdrop. That is the one that you enjoy and letting, don’t let, don’t let design rules, colour rules, people tell you what to do with your backdrop. Choose what reflects you. Choose what makes you happy and choose the one that you’re most comfortable with.
Then I took you through examples of backdrops of my past videos to show you that it doesn’t need to be this perfect interiorly designed backdrop. It really just needs to be something that you’re comfortable with so that you can focus on the important part of the video, which is delivering your content. I’ll get off my soapbox now.
If you found this video useful, give me a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel. If you are looking to get online, if you’re looking to start live streaming, make sure you grab a copy of my Facebook Live Cheat Sheets. It’s a super simple guide to get you up in streaming on Facebook live, even if you’ve never hit record before. I’m going to drop a link in the description to that, and hopefully put it on screen somewhere so that you can grab that. I hope that you found this video useful, and I’ll see you on the next broadcast bye for now.
