Apartment Therapy Just Created Zoom Backgrounds So You Can Spruce Up Your Place for Free

Like so many others across the world, the Apartment Therapy team transitioned to working from home earlier this month. One unexpected perk? The voyeuristic joy of peeking into everyone’s homes during video meetings.

But working from your bedroom, living room, or kitchen might also might mean you’re a little more mindful of the clutter. In one meeting earlier this week, I was embarrassed to see the NYC marathon signs I made to cheer my sister on in November peeking out from the entryway behind me (it’s hard for me to purge sentimental clutter, what can I say?).

If you’re in need of some serious, well, apartment therapy, we’ve got you covered—virtually. We rounded up some of our favorite illustrated home backgrounds so you can use them on Zoom. Here’s how to do it:

• Right click (or control click) on the image of your choice below. Select “save image as,” to save it to your computer.

• Then log into zoom and open settings from the main Zoom menu.
• Click on the “virtual background” tab, and enable it if you haven’t already. Then click on the plus sign next to “choose your virtual background.” Select the Apartment Therapy background you downloaded.
• You might have to uncheck “mirror my video” to get any text to show up correctly. Still having trouble? Check out (Zoom’s full instructions here.

Here’s a before/after from my own experiment. An added bonus? Any Zoom background lurkers will disappear (did you notice my husband’s rogue foot on the couch in the “before” photo? It’s gone in the “after”).

Have fun sprucing up your place with us! Please tag @apartmenttherapy on social with your photos.