Free Meeting Backgrounds

About Room for Zoom

Room For Zoom is a huge free collection of the best virtual Zoom backgrounds for use in Zoom, Microsoft Teams and other online meeting apps.

Why have co-workers critique your living area when instead you can have fun with a distracted boyfriend or girlfriend background, “this is fine” house on fire, relax with an inspirational landscape or beach background or highlight your favorite TV show such as Breaking Bad, the Good Place or Suits. There are popular backgrounds free to download from Batman and Gotham City, Star Wars, Top Gun, Pokemon Go, Sesame Street and more being added all the time. You can even pretend you are not using a background and hide clutter with a cool living area or a wall of books.

Our backgrounds are split into categories with previews and popularity gauges to help you find a great background to download quickly.

Not only do virtual backgrounds lighten up meetings which helps reduce meeting fatigue, they also help add a level of privacy when you are inviting people into your home.

With recent events, virtual meetings have taken off in a huge way especially with Zoom due to its ease of use. However other apps have been quick to make it easier to change your virtual background including Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Skype and Cisco Webex.

Having problems adding a background? Our guides will help. With Zoom the most common issues are either your Zoom software needs updated or the device isn’t up to it yet. Microsoft Teams has had virtual backgrounds for a long time however they were hard to add until recently. We will show you where to copy your backgrounds to have them appear in Microsoft Teams if you are using an older version. Skype and Google Meet also have virtual background options and we describe how to use these also.

We also list the image resolution of the cool image backgrounds. Zoom recommends an image background of 1920 x 1080 as this has a 16:9 aspect ratio. Seeing black bars beside your background image? It is probably because you are using a background image with a different aspect ratio.

A green screen, also known as a Chroma Key, is recommended by Zoom and there is an option to tell Zoom you are using a green screen however Microsoft Teams say they do not need this for their software.

A chroma key is a technique used in film, video and still photography and refers to having a solid consistent color that can be easy to identify by software so it can be replaced with a background image. The color does not have to be green (blue screens are common). It should ideally only be a color that is not likely to appear anywhere else (so if you want to wear a green T-shirt, maybe get a blue chroma key screen). A setting needs to be changed within Zoom to tell it you are using a green screen. Note that there have been complaints in relation to Zoom that the face-detection algorithm erases the faces of people of color.

Room for Zoom will keep getting updated with the best images, tips and ideas for your meetings so keep checking our website.

Do you know of a cool meeting background image? Use our submit form on our website to tell us about it. You can also find us on Facebook (https://facebook.com/zoombackgrounds) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/roomforzoom).

Virtual Background Tips

What is the best size background to use? Zoom recommends backgrounds with dimensions of 1920px by 1080px. This is a 16:9 aspect ratio. If you use an image with a different aspect ratio, you may see black bars beside the background image

Need to leave the room for a moment?
Just cover over the webcam. It will allow viewers to continue enjoying your background.

Make lots of calls?
Consider having a green screen behind you. It will really help the software. Or if you like to wear green sometimes or have green eyes, perhaps one with a blue screen as an option.

Before a meeting, try a test run. It will help you see if you are clashing with your background at all (e.g. the color of clothing or green eyes).

Dark hair and dark chair? It may mean that the chair may move in and out of frame at different times. You can help the software by placing something of a different solid color over the back of your chair, giving the software a better chance at differentiating between you and the chair. If you have dark hair you might stand out better with a light background (and vice versa).