12 Tips For Looking Great In Video Calls
Quick and easy changes that you can do in under 15 minutes & improve every aspect of a call once and for all your future video calls.
These are results of both experimenting in my calls and my photography lighting techniques.
Everyone can pick up a tip or two to look better on their calls — even if you already knew some of these!
Remember, use the tips that you can, and then forget about looking good altogether. In a call, all you need to do isn’t to be great, you need to be you.
Your laptop.
1. Position the camera correctly
Position of the camera to your eyes affects your posture, your facial balance and point of view. If you don’t have a separate webcam, you need to balance the height of your device to be in a comfortable position with a straight posture.
Try different heights by putting books under the laptop or changing the height of your chair by putting a folded blanket on your chair if it isn’t adjustable.
2. Frame yourself in the background
Pay attention to visual clues and lines in the scene. The more you point the eyes to your face the better. Re-position yourself slightly based on the objects in the background to achieve this improvement.
3. Wipe the camera before the call
Any camera needs to be cleaned once in a while. It gets dust and it has fingerprints on it. Its effect might not be so significant, but it’s certainly an improvement.
Your room & the light.
4. Clear the background from the unnecessary things
Not everything should be removed but move the messy clothes, weird hair products, a pillow (I love my pillow, but it doesn’t belong in a call) or at least organize them.
Good news is, whatever is outside the frame doesn’t matter!
What makes clutter unwelcome is the distraction, it distracts the caller to something unwanted.
5. Use good quality light bulbs
Consider the appearance of people and objects under daylight. They tend to look great, right? Well, the CRI of daylight (Color rendering index) is around 100. Contrast this to an orange street light, where it’s hard to discern the color of anything. That street light has a CRI close to 0.
Next time you go to the store, find a bulb that specifies a CRI of more than 90.
6. Position yourself based on the light
The light source should not be placed exactly behind you, it makes you look dark. Move away from that window behind you. Move to find a wall that’s darker than your face.
Try putting the light in a 45-degree angle to make half of your face slightly darker, it generally looks better, but faces are different.
Stay a few steps from the background if possible, to avoid hard shadows. Also, move a couple of feet away from the light source if it looks harsh.
7. Avoid the Panda look!
By sitting right under the light source, your eyes become dark while only your nose and cheeks are lit, and you’ll look like a panda! Move to the sides or behind to avoid the panda look.
8. The window as the perfect light source
It seems obvious but we often don’t think of using the window because simply the window is just in another room or our desk isn’t well-positioned.
If you don’t have a window, you can install some indirect flat LEDs or make normal light bulbs indirect by wrapping a think aluminium foil around them (be very careful)
Your voice.
9. Drink water, save the caffeinated drinks
Have a glass of water on your desk before the call— you should do that while working too. Coffee, chai, or that Redbull dries your mouth and increases your stress.
10. Don’t use both the computer speaker & microphone at the same time
It’s fine to use the laptop’s microphone if you’re in a fairly quiet room. But in that case, find any kind of headphones (even from your old phone) to not use the computer speaker.
Using both at the same time repeats the sound coming out of the speaker back into the mic and reduces voice quality.
11. Position the microphone correctly
If you have an external microphone, make sure to face the microphone toward your mouth and to the opposite of the noise source — so you isolate your voice.
Look at the sound levels in the Sound preferences. You want to make sure speaking normally to the mic brings the level to around %60 of the bar.
If you don’t have a microphone yet, no worries, any pair of headphones or earphones’ microphone is better than using the internal microphone in a noisy room.
For those of you considering buying a USB microphone for video calls, check out the affordable Samson Meteor Mic USB Studio or Blue Yeti USB Microphone.
12. Wrap a blanket over your head (for audio-only calls, obviously)
If you use your headphone or internal microphone, and your video is disabled, you can put a blanket on yourself to significantly reduce any noise around.
No photo for this section ☺️
Bonus: Use your phone, not your laptop
If you don’t need screen sharing or browsing the web, consider using your phone as it’s probably at a much higher quality than an internal camera—at least in Macbooks.
Bonus: Try stepping outside, using the daylight
If you don’t have a window or good LEDs for now, step outside and have the call at a fairly quiet place nearby. Streets or parks look beautiful too if not very noisy.
Bonus: Use all your facial expressions
When we’re uncomfortable which we are usually at the beginning of a call, we forgot to be ourselves. Using your personality, your facial expressions, your special language goes a long way in feeling comfortably nice for all attendees.
In a call, you do not need to be great, you need to be you—meaning to forget about your looks the moment the call starts.
Bonus: Shoulders back, deep breath
Do 4:4:4. Do it now as you read. For four seconds inhale slowly. Hold your breath for another four seconds and breath out calmly for four seconds.
I used to underestimate the power of physical comfort, breath and shoulders. Now I do that before any stressful situation or call.
Relax. Enjoy Talking To A Human.
All of these tips are worths nothing if you always feel you don’t look good. After doing as many of them you can afford to, don’t think again about how you look, but rather who you’re talking with.
Get to know who you’re talking with, curiously ask them questions about themselves and I promise you’ll feel relaxed afterwards.
Peace ✌️🌷
By the way, I’m Mo, the co-founder of There which provides a virtual office for remote teams or when working from home. Drop me a message I’d love to talk! Request access to our new product here.
