How to Change the Background Color of an Instagram Story
July 15, 2020
By
Hugh Stephens
Do you want to change the background in your Instagram Stories but aren’t sure how to do it, exactly?
FACT: Instagram Stories have turned out to be one of our most favorite reasons for spending time on the social network.
What’s more, Instagram also constantly offers us new creative ideas to make posts more appealing.
Take Instagram Story Backgrounds, for example. More and more people are changing the background color of their Stories to ensure that they look original (and fun!)
Here’s everything you need to know about it and how to change the background of your Stories.
How to Be Creative With Instagram Stories
If there’s one thing that can be said about Instagram is that the social media network offers so many ways to let one’s creativity go.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that you have to be a professional designer to create appealing stories.
Quite the contrary, in fact.
Instagram is offering a series of features that help you take your Stories to the next level with ease.
Instagram Stickers are simple graphic design elements that help you make your Stories more engaging.
There are many different types of stickers to add to your Stories. Some of them are animated, others allow you to mention your friends, while you can even host a Q&A session with your followers.
Stickers are easy to use and once you start adding them to your Stories you can’t get enough of them.
Instagram Live is a very popular feature that allows you to connect with your friends in real-time. Many brands use it to stream important events, host interviews, or plan takeovers with influencers.
What makes Instagram Live engaging is the ability to put yourself out in the world without any additional filters and scheduling. Authenticity is very rewarding and it’s up to you to decide on the frequency of going live.
However, it is important to practice and get to grips with the technical aspects of going live. Find the best angle to hold your phone, think about what you want to say, and explore all the features that you want to use before going live.
The best thing about using Live? Users are notified when you are starting the live stream, which means that your brand can see an instant increase in engagement.
Another way to stay creative on Instagram is to share a video collage on your Stories. Instagram collages became popular when influencers started sharing a series of photos all in a single Story.
Stories with collage looked incredibly creative and many users wanted to follow the trend. In response to this demand, Instagram introduced an easy way to create a collage through its Layout feature. All you have to do is add two or more photos on your Story and adjust them accordingly.
You can also create a collage on your own by playing around with the background and the way you want to display the photos. You can find out more about Instagram collage here.
Changing Your Background
Did you know that changing the background is one of the most commonly used stories feature on the social network?
Many Instagram features start with the step of changing your background. It can be a simple change of a solid color in a story. However, you can go much further than that.
Changing your Instagram Story background allows you to experiment with new creative ideas to boost your engagement. You don’t need to limit yourself to Stories that look the same.
How to Change the Background on Your Instagram Story
There are three different ways to change your background depending on the type of background you want to add to your Stories.
Changing the default color to a different solid background
Changing to a background that you’ve already downloaded on your phone
Changing the background color and adding an image along with it
Changing to a Different Solid Colour
When you’re sharing a post, Instagram automatically picks the default color for you.
But you don’t need to stick to this color, though.
You can change your Story by adding a choosing a different color option, a one that makes your content pop up even more.
Here are the instructions you need to follow.
Open Stories
Take a photo or video
Click on the brush icon for highlighting
Pick a color from the list of available options
Tap your screen for a couple of seconds
You’ll see the new background applied to your Story
TIP: Because of this change, the photo you initially added to the Story is no longer there. As a result, you must treat the Story with the new background as a blank canvas to add text.
Also, if you are sharing a post from your feed and want to adjust the background color to your post’s branding, you can simply use the color marker’ to pick the exact same color that is in your post.
Changing to a Different Background That You’ve Already Downloaded on Your Phone
What if you want to be more creative and don’t want to limit yourself to a simple color change?
That’s where this option to use a photo that you’ve downloaded to your phone comes in.
TIP: Your new backgrounds don’t have to come from free stock sites. You can create your own backgrounds with your design team to reflect your branding and make your stories immediately recognizable as coming from your brand.
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Changing the Background Color and Adding an Image to It
Your third option is to change the background color but also, add an image on top of it.
(A quick note: This option works in practically the same way as creating an Instagram collage.)
Here’s how it works:
Open Stories
Take a photo
Click on the brush for highlighting
Pick a color
Tap your screen for a couple of seconds
The new color should be applied to your background
Go to your Photos
Click to ‘Copy photo’ option for the one you want to use
Now, go back to Stories and you should see a pop-up on the bottom left of your screen showing you the copied photo
If you miss the pop-up on your screen, go to the text function and select paste. The image will still show up.
Takeaway Tips on Changing your Instagram Story Background
Although it may seem like an insignificant feature, changing the Instagram Story background offers you new ways to make your stories pop.
Even a simple change of color can make your Stories more appealing to the audience. And, naturally, the engagement will go up even higher when you start creating custom backgrounds.
You can even be more creative by adding animated backgrounds to your next Instagram Stories.
Isn’t that amazing?
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