Taking meetings from a messy living room? Slap up a picture of a gilded library. Working from the living room couch with your husband? Cover him up with a picture of outer space. A zoom virtual background helps you conceal the fact that you’re taking a meeting from bed, accompanied by your dog. These are situations when a virtual background will really improve your video conferencing game, limiting distractions in the background while helping you maintain a bit of privacy in this new reality of WFH. Maybe you’re working from a shared space with your roommates, or a toy-strewn living room, or (in moments of quiet-seeking desperation) the bathroom. There are more people working from home than ever, making for crowded spaces and awkward settings.

Keep reading for tips on selecting the right virtual background images, and figure out how to change your virtual background in Zoom and other apps. There are some other providers in the mix too, like Blue Jeans’s cloud video conferencing software and a host of options that help you cover up the backdrop with background blur. Zoom is proving to be the software of choice in the age of social distancing, offering Zoom backgrounds to spice up (or unspice?) teleconferencing.

Luckily, there’s a whole host of ways to change your virtual background in video-conferencing software and apps. As this infamous video demonstrates, there’s always a small chance for embarrassment on a video call taken from home: a pile of unwashed dishes, newly homeschooled children fighting over video games, bedroom decor that you never expected to share but have to because your roommate took over the living room.

Weird zoom backgrounds