A custom Microsoft Teams background from your own image

A custom Teams background replaces the room behind you with an image you chose: a tidy office, a brand colour with your company logo, or a quiet scene that does not pull attention away from what you are saying. Teams does the hard part live, separating you from the room in every frame of video. What it cannot do is make the image good. This guide covers the upload steps as Microsoft describes them in September 2026, the size and format that give a sharp result, what makes a background look professional rather than distracting, and where a background remover helps when the image you want starts life as a photo of a logo or a product.

How to upload your own Teams background

From Microsoft Support, Change your background in Microsoft Teams meetings, checked September 2026.

Before a meeting (desktop)

1. Open the Teams calendar, select the meeting and choose Join.
2. On the pre-join screen, select Effects and avatars.
3. Choose More video effects, then Add new, and pick an image from your computer.
4. Select the image to apply it, then join.

During a meeting (desktop)

1. Select More actions, then Video effects and settings.
2. Choose Video effects.
3. Select Add new to upload an image, or pick one you added before.
4. Select Preview to see it on yourself, then Apply.

On a phone

On the pre-join screen, tap Background effects and choose an effect or Add new. During a meeting, tap More, then Background effects. Microsoft’s page lists requirements for Android: a recent Teams app, Android 10 or newer, and a supported graphics chip.

In a browser

Microsoft’s page describes the desktop and mobile apps. If you use Teams on the web and do not see Add new under the video effects, upload the image once from the desktop app instead.

The rules Microsoft states on that page:

The page also carries a warning worth repeating: blurring or replacing your background may not keep sensitive things in the room from being visible. Clear the whiteboard anyway.

What size a Teams background should be

Microsoft does not publish a pixel size for the backgrounds you upload yourself. It does for the backgrounds an admin uploads for a whole organisation: Microsoft Learn (checked September 2026) gives PNG or JPEG, at least 360 x 360 pixels and at most 3840 x 2160 pixels.

For your own image, the useful rule is the shape of your camera picture. Almost every laptop webcam and external camera sends a 16:9 picture, so a 16:9 image at 1920 x 1080 pixels fills it with the least cropping. 1280 x 720 is the same shape and fine for a flat colour with a logo; a detailed photo looks better at 1920 x 1080.

Two things change what people see of your image:

• The edges may be cropped. The background is fitted behind your video, and an image of a different shape from your camera picture loses some of its edges. Even at 16:9, leave a margin. Keep anything important (a logo, a line of text) away from the edges.
• You cover the middle. Your head and shoulders sit in the centre, a little low. A logo in the dead centre is hidden the moment you sit down. Put it in the upper left or upper right third.

What makes a good Teams background

A background works when nobody comments on it. Some choices that get there:

• A real, tidy space. A photo of your actual office, a bookshelf or a plain wall with one plant looks natural, because the light is similar to the light on your face. Shoot it from where your camera sits, at the same height.
• A flat brand colour with a small logo. Clean, clearly intentional, and it looks the same on every screen. A muted brand colour works better than a saturated one, which can tint the edges of your hair.
• Soft, low detail. Busy patterns and high contrast behind your head make the edge Teams draws around you more noticeable. A photo with a shallow depth of field, or a slightly blurred one, hides it.
• Brightness close to your room. A very bright background behind a face in a dim room makes you look pasted on. Match it roughly to the light where you sit.
• No text in the middle. Words behind your head are unreadable and look like a mistake.

For the colour behind a face in more depth, the professional headshot background guide covers which colours flatter skin and which fight it; the same logic applies on a video call.

Where a background remover helps

Teams takes care of cutting you out, so a background remover is not for you here. It is for the picture you put behind you, when the thing you want in it is stuck on a background you do not want.

A logo on a brand colour

Often the only copy of a logo to hand is a photo: a sign on the office wall, a printed letterhead, a sticker on a laptop, or a JPG with a white box around it. Cutting it out gives you the logo alone, which you can then place on your brand colour.

1. Drop the photo or image of the logo on getPNG. The background is removed in the browser, at the full resolution of the original.
2. Check the edge in the compare view by dragging the divider. If a pale rim from the old background shows, Clean edge colour takes that colour out of the soft edge pixels, and Edge shift pulls the outline in by a pixel or two.
3. Choose your brand colour as the background with the colour picker.
4. In Sizes, pick the YouTube thumbnail canvas, which is 1280 x 720 and so 16:9, and fit the logo inside a margin, then drag it to the upper corner where your head will not cover it. The preview is the file.
5. Save it as a PNG and upload it to Teams with Add new.

The logo is never enlarged past its own pixels, so if it comes from a small image it is placed at its own size rather than blown up. If you need it larger, start from a bigger photo of the logo or build the background in an editor at 1920 x 1080. For more on turning a photographed logo into something clean, see a logo photo to a transparent PNG.

A product or object on a clean backdrop

A sales team showing a product behind them, or a studio showing its latest piece, can do the same: cut the object out of a photo, put it on a plain colour, and use that as the background. Keep the object to one side of the frame.

Transparent PNGs and Teams: the frosted glass effect

A background you upload yourself should be a complete picture. Transparent areas have nothing behind them to show, so do not leave any.

There is one documented exception, for organisations. According to Microsoft Learn, an admin can upload a transparent PNG as an organisation background to get a frosted glass effect: the transparent areas become a blur of the real room, and the graphic (a logo, for example) stays sharp in front of it. This is set up in the Teams admin center, and only users with a Teams Premium licence can select organisation backgrounds, although anyone in the meeting sees them.

If your organisation uses it, a clean transparent logo is exactly what the admin needs. getPNG can make one: remove the background from the logo and save the transparent PNG. What a transparent background is explains why it has to be PNG and not JPG.

When this does not work

• You are on Linux or in a virtual desktop. Microsoft’s page says the feature is not available on Linux or through optimised VDI. Join from a Windows or Mac computer, or a phone that meets the requirements, when the background matters.
• The option is greyed out or missing. Your organisation can restrict video effects to blur only, or to its own backgrounds, through a meeting policy. Ask IT; you cannot change it yourself.
• The logo is hidden or cropped. Your head covers the centre and the edges of the image can be cropped. Move the logo up and toward a corner, with a margin from the edge.
• Your edges look soft or flicker. That is Teams separating you from the room, not the image. Better, even light on your face and a room that contrasts with your hair and clothes help more than any change to the background.
• The background looks blurry. A small image stretched to fill a 1080p video looks soft. Use at least 1920 x 1080 for a photo. A logo from a tiny file will stay small, because getPNG does not enlarge a subject past its own pixels; start from a larger original.
• A white rim around the logo. The old background left colour in the soft edge pixels. Use Clean edge colour and a pixel of Edge shift; white halos around a cutout explains why it happens.

The same image, at the same 16:9 size, works in other meeting apps too; the Zoom virtual background guide covers Zoom’s own file rules, which are a little stricter.

Privacy: company logos and office photos

A background often starts from something internal: an unreleased logo, a photo of the office with a screen in shot, a product that is not launched yet. Many online editors and background removers upload the file to their servers to process it. getPNG removes the background inside your browser and the image is never sent anywhere, and after the first picture it keeps working with the connection switched off. If you want to check any tool yourself, how to check a website is not uploading your photos shows the method with the browser’s network tab.

The steps, in short

1. Decide what the background shows. A tidy photo of a real office or shelf, a flat brand colour with a logo, or a simple, calm scene. Keep the middle quiet, because you sit in front of it.
2. Make it 16:9. Build or crop the image at 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720 pixels, the shape of most webcam pictures, so Teams crops as little as possible.
3. Save it as JPG or PNG. Microsoft lists JPG, PNG and BMP. A photo is smallest as a JPG; a flat colour with a logo stays crisp as a PNG.
4. Open Video effects before or during a meeting. On the pre-join screen select Effects and avatars; in a meeting select More actions, then Video effects and settings, then Video effects.
5. Add your image. Select More video effects, then Add new, and choose the file from your computer. Preview it, then Apply.
6. Check it with your camera on. Look at the preview for text that sits behind your head and for a logo that is cropped at the edges, and adjust the image if needed.

Questions

What size should a Teams background be?

Microsoft's support page for changing your background does not give a size, only the file types (JPG, PNG or BMP). A 16:9 image at 1920 x 1080 pixels matches most webcams and leaves little to crop. For backgrounds an admin uploads for the whole organisation, Microsoft Learn gives 360 x 360 as the minimum and 3840 x 2160 as the maximum (checked September 2026).

How do I add my own background in Teams?

Before a meeting, select Effects and avatars on the pre-join screen; during a meeting, select More actions, Video effects and settings, then Video effects. Then choose More video effects, Add new, and pick a JPG, PNG or BMP file from your computer.

Can I use a transparent PNG as a Teams background?

For your own uploaded background, use a full picture with no transparent areas, because there is nothing for Teams to show through them. Microsoft does document one use of transparency: a transparent PNG uploaded by an admin as an organisation background becomes a frosted glass effect, blurring the room where the image is transparent. That needs Teams Premium.

Why can I not change my background in Teams?

Microsoft's page says Linux users cannot use the feature and that background effects are not available through optimised virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). On Android it lists a minimum app version, Android 10 and certain graphics chips. Your organisation can also restrict video effects by policy.

Does Teams remember my background for the next meeting?

Yes. Microsoft's page says the background you choose stays in place for all your meetings and calls until you change it again.

Do I need to cut myself out to use a Teams background?

No. Teams separates you from the room in real time. A background remover is useful for the image behind you instead: a logo lifted off a photo and placed on a brand colour, or a product placed on a clean backdrop.