How to look good on Zoom and other video calls: light, camera angle and sound

How you look on a video call depends mostly on light and angle, not on the camera. Sit facing a window or a lamp so the light falls on your face, raise the camera to the height of your eyes, and wipe the lens. Those three changes cost nothing and make an ordinary laptop camera look far better. After that, a microphone close to your mouth does as much for how you come across as anything in the picture.

Put the light in front of you

Webcams have small sensors that need plenty of light. In a dim room they amplify the picture, which adds grainy noise and smears fine detail, and many also lower their frame rate to collect more light, so movement looks choppy. Better light improves the picture more than a new camera does.

• Face the light. A window in front of you, or slightly to one side, is the best light you'll get. A window behind you does the opposite: the camera adjusts for the bright glass and turns your face into a dark shape.
• Place a lamp behind or beside your screen, a little above eye level and pointing at you. Light only from above, like a ceiling light, leaves shadows under your eyes and nose.
• Make it soft. A bare bulb close to you gives hard shadows and shiny skin. Use a lamp with a shade, or point the lamp at a pale wall so the light bounces back onto you.
• Don't mix colors. Daylight is bluish and most indoor bulbs are warmer, so a window on one side and a lamp on the other can make one half of your face cool and the other orange. Stick to one, or use bulbs labeled daylight next to a window.
• Move glare off your glasses. Raise the light a little or move it to the side until the reflection leaves your lenses, and turn the screen brightness down if the screen shows in them.

The webcam test tells you if the picture is too dark, too bright or black. If you can't add light, Zoom has Adjust for low light in Settings > Video, and on recent versions of macOS, Macs with Apple silicon offer Studio Light in the Video menu that appears in the menu bar during a call. Both help, but a real light helps more.

Raise the camera to eye level

A laptop on a desk looks up at you, which shows the ceiling and the underside of your chin. A camera at the height of your eyes gives the view people would have across a table.

• Lift the laptop on books, a box or a stand until the camera at the top of the screen is level with your eyes. A separate keyboard makes typing easier.
• Sit about an arm's length away. Much closer, and a webcam's wide lens makes your nose and forehead look bigger. Much farther, and your face gets small and soft.
• Frame your head and shoulders. Leave a little space above your head, keep your eyes roughly a third of the way down the picture, and center yourself.
• Look at the lens when you talk. Move the call window to the top of the screen, just under the camera, so looking at people's faces is almost the same as looking into the lens.

Some computers can help with framing. Center Stage keeps you centered on some Macs and with an iPhone used as a webcam, and Windows Studio Effects on Copilot+ PCs can keep you framed, blur the background and correct eye contact. Because the computer applies them, they work in many call apps, not just one.

Tidy and simplify your background

• Choose a calm wall or shelf. Clutter, moving things and busy patterns pull attention away from your face.
• Keep windows out of the frame. A bright window anywhere behind you can make the camera darken everything else.
• Sit a step or two in front of the wall. It keeps your shadow off the wall and stops you looking pressed against it.
• Use blur or a virtual background with care. They hide a messy room, but they can clip your ears, hair or hands when you move, and they take extra processing power, which can slow an older laptop. Blur usually looks more natural than a fake room.
• Check the whole frame before important calls. Look for anything private: papers, photos, a screen behind you, or a mirror that shows more of the room.

Make the picture sharp

• Clean the lens. Laptop cameras collect fingerprints and dust, which make the picture hazy and give lights a glow. Wipe the lens with a soft, dry cloth, like a glasses cloth.
• Check what your camera really delivers. The webcam test shows the resolution and frame rate your camera delivers. 720p is enough for most calls, and 1080p looks crisper when your app sends it.
• Turn on HD where your app offers it. In Zoom, tick HD in Settings > Video. In Google Meet, raise Send resolution in Settings > Video. Most apps still lower the quality when the connection is slow.
• Go easy on smoothing filters. Zoom's Touch up my appearance and similar effects smooth your skin by blurring detail. A little is fine; a lot makes you look out of focus.
• Try your phone. Most phones have a far better camera than a laptop. See how to use your phone as a webcam.

If the picture is grainy even after cleaning the lens, add light before you change any settings. A brighter scene lets the camera stop amplifying a dark picture, and that's where most of the blur and noise comes from.

Sound as good as you look

A slightly soft picture is easy to put up with. Sound you have to strain to follow is tiring for everyone on the call.

• Get the mic close to you. A headset or a desk microphone a hand's width or so from your mouth beats a laptop mic an arm's length away, because your voice arrives much louder than the room around you.
• Wear headphones so your speakers can't feed back into your microphone. See why echo happens on calls.
• Be careful with Bluetooth headsets. Their microphone drops into a low-quality call mode, so you sound muffled. Here's the better setup.
• Soften the room. Bare walls and hard floors make you sound hollow. Curtains, a rug or a sofa behind you help.

The mic test's sound check tells you how far your voice stands out from the background noise, and whether you come through clear or muffled. If people keep asking you to speak up, see how to make your mic louder.

Steady your connection

Call apps lower your picture quality on their own when the connection struggles, so a weak connection makes you blurry before it makes you freeze. Your picture travels on your upload, which on many home connections is much slower than the download.

• Plug in a network cable if you can, or sit closer to the router. Every wall and floor between you and the router weakens Wi-Fi.
• Pause big uploads and downloads, like cloud backups, game updates and streaming on other devices at home.
• Close other video apps and tabs. They compete for your connection, and on Windows only one app can usually use the camera at a time.
• Turn off a VPN for the call if you don't need it, since it can add delay.

Do a two-minute check before the call

1. Run the [call check](/camera-and-mic-test). It checks your camera, microphone and speakers together, then tells you what to fix and which device names to pick in your call app.
2. Look at your picture in the webcam test or your app's preview: light on your face, eyes near the top third, nothing distracting behind you.
3. Record a 10-second clip in the mic test and listen to it on headphones.
4. Pick the same camera and microphone in your app, and silence notifications so nothing appears on screen mid-call.
5. Join a few minutes early. For a job interview, see the interview checklist; for a proctored exam, the online exam tech checklist.

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