Elevate the Visual Appeal of Your Video Credits

YouTube has grown in popularity since it was developed and launched. You can watch YouTube videos for educational purposes, entertainment, or catch up with your favorite content creators. Thumbnails are a massive element of what makes a YouTube video successful. You can incorporate numerous fonts into your thumbnails, leaving you feeling stuck on which is the best option.

This article will discuss the 20 best YouTube thumbnail fonts to make your videos amazing.

1. Bebas Neue - Popular YouTube Thumbnail Font
2. Impact - YouTube Thumbnail Font for Strong Sense
3. Montserrat - Good Font for YouTube Thumbnail
4. Alfa Slab - YouTube Thumbnail Text Font With a Futuristic Vibe
5. Againts - Best Font for YouTube Thumbnail
6. Dancing Script - YouTube Thumbnail Font With a Sweat Vibe
7. Oswald
8. Arial Negrata - Print Font for YouTube Thumbnails
9. BlackOpsOne - Best YouTube Thumbnail Font for Gaming Videos
10. Beauty and the Beast
11. Chucklesome
12. Caribold
13. Bernhard - Serious YouTube Thumbnail Font
14. Dustin Font Quartet
15. The Tide - Chunky-Letter Font for YouTube Thumbnails
16. Badaboom BB
17. River Drive
18. Traveler Note
19. Free Love Script
20. Config Rounded

• Generate Cool YouTube Thumbnail Texts With Wondershare Filmora

20 Best Fonts for YouTube Thumbnails To Bring Traffic to Your Videos

Your thumbnail is the first thing your audience will see as they browse on YouTube. Since you only have a few seconds to make a good first impression, it would be wise to make the most out of it.

YouTube thumbnails capture the viewer’s attention and spark their interest. The more eye-catching your thumbnail is, the more likely they will click on your video. If you take your time to make good thumbnails for your YouTube videos, you will undoubtedly increase your channel’s traffic and expand your reach.

Recent research reveals that YouTube thumbnails with text and numbers get more clicks than thumbnails with plain images. Therefore, choosing a great font to accompany your thumbnail would be wise and make it more visually appealing. Stick around for the fun part of the article, where we discuss twenty best fonts for your YouTube thumbnails.

1. Bebas Neue - Popular YouTube Thumbnail Font

The first YouTube thumbnail font on our list is a popular one known as Bebas Neue. You can use this font for your videos and thumbnails regardless of what content you post. The elegant yet sublime design makes it a perfect choice for you if you are just starting out or have yet to explore other options.

2. Impact - YouTube Thumbnail Font for Strong Sense

If you want a straightforward font for your thumbnail, look no further than Impact. Its strong sense makes it the best font for YouTube thumbnails. Even though it is versatile for any content, it is most frequently used on reaction videos, pranks, or reviews.

3. Montserrat - Good Font for YouTube Thumbnail

The letters in the Montserrat video are very simple, with the slightest shadowing and outline. This font is pretty versatile, and you can use it to make thumbnails for laid-back content or more serious and factual videos.

4. Alfa Slab - YouTube Thumbnail Text Font With a Futuristic Vibe

The Alfa slab font has a futuristic vibe to it, making it the perfect choice for content about new innovations or the future of technology. The blocky yet simple letters are easy to read and don’t take away from the main message or the background.

5. Againts - Best Font for YouTube Thumbnail

Suppose you post lots of travel content, share videos of you lounging on the best, or sample a new restaurant. The Againts font has a unique outdoor vibe that makes your videos pop and makes your audience anticipate where you will travel next.

6. Dancing Script - YouTube Thumbnail Font With a Sweat Vibe

The Dancing Script font is a must-have in your arsenal if you wouldn’t want your videos to be too serious. The slanted letters also give your thumbnail a feminine touch, making it great for fashion vlogs or videos about life hacks for ladies.

7. Oswald

The letters in this Oswald font are encapsulated in a dark grey rectangle, making them stand out and easy to read. You could use this font with other backgrounds in your thumbnail to highlight keywords you wouldn’t want your audience to miss as they scroll through YouTube.

8. Arial Negrata - Print Font for YouTube Thumbnails

We couldn’t forget to mention Arial Negrata, which has a beautiful print font and complementary sub-fonts. You can easily vary the fonts’ sizes for emphasis and to capture the interest of your audience.

9. BlackOpsOne - Best YouTube Thumbnail Font for Gaming Videos

Are you tired of the boring print fonts and girly cursive text? If you answer yes, you should check out the BlackOpsOne font, which is unlike anything you have ever seen. This font is perfect for gaming videos or content that involves long streams.

10. Beauty and the Beast

If you are a streamer, gamer, or like to post life hack videos on YouTube, you are probably looking for some good fonts for YouTube thumbnails to make your video less serious. The Beauty and the Beast font is very whimsical, giving your thumbnail a playful feel.

11. Chucklesome

You will immediately recognize this font if you grew up watching many cartoons and reading comic books. Chucklesome is another font with the best font color for YouTube thumbnails, making it an excellent choice if your YouTube channel is about games, movies, or comic books. The artsy typeface, bold letters, and bright colors can capture your audience’s attention from a mile away.

12. Caribold

As the name suggests, the Caribold font for YouTube thumbnails is very bold, and the letters almost jump out of the screen at you. The borders, outline, and shadows emphasize the font, making it hard to miss. You can use this font to create thumbnails for “How To” videos.

13. Bernhard - Serious YouTube Thumbnail Font

Depending on the content you post, you might want to discard the whimsical feel and give your thumbnail a more serious vibe. The Bernhard font is technically an enlarged script font that makes your videos and thumbnails look fresh and elegant. You can use this font for historical or factual videos.

14. Dustin Font Quartet

It is not uncommon for thumbnails to draw inspiration from other brands. The Dustin font is an excellent example of such a font, which is similar to the Supreme brand logo. This font is pretty versatile as it comes in a pack of four fonts, making you spoilt for choice!

15. The Tide - Chunky-Letter Font for YouTube Thumbnails

The Tide thumbnail font gives a relaxing beach vibe that would be great if you love posting laid-back content. This font also comes with chunky letters, which are easy to read and grab the attention of anyone scrolling through the platform.

16. Badaboom BB

The best font for YouTube thumbnail is Badaboom BB font, which has vibrant colors and unique letters. The red and yellow colors are an absolute showstopper and a must-have if you want your audience to notice you. This font style is excellent for gaming and streaming YouTube videos, where you just want your audience to have a good time.

17. River Drive

When inserting text into a thumbnail, you must balance the visual elements to ensure the letters don’t overshadow the image. The River Drive font allows you to create bold yet legible text without removing the stunning photo in the background.

18. Traveler Note

Adventure and travel channels help us know what it’s like to visit a place, even though we haven’t left our couches. The Traveler Note font brings life and cheer to your travel vlogs as you continue introducing us to different parts of the world.

19. Free Love Script

Perhaps your YouTube is missing that feminine touch to tie everything together. The curvy lettering in the Free Love Script is perfect for lifestyle videos or fashion vlogs, which could use a bit of femininity to drive the message home.

20. Config Rounded

If your channel is professional or you post informative content about finances, business, and other important topics, the best YouTube thumbnail font for you is the Config rounded font. It looks pretty modern and works well with any background.

Generate Cool YouTube Thumbnail Texts With Wondershare Filmora

If you have been making YouTube videos for a while now, then you must be familiar with Wondershare Filmora , a top-tier video editing tool. If not, we will discuss some of the features that make it a great editing tool in a short while. You can also use this platform to create and design the perfect thumbnail for your YouTube video.

Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

The title editing feature on this platform allows you to add creative text to your video and customize it as you see fit. You can also use Wondershare Filmora to make a title with customizable parameters. For instance, you can edit the text titles using three different fill types: color fill, gradient fill, and image fill.

Wondershare Filmora is an excellent tool to help bring your thumbnails alive and reel the masses in to view more videos from your channel. You cannot possibly exhaust the 107 animation styles, 12 types of shadow effects, and more than ten borders that make your text stand out from the rest. If you are unhappy with your current font, you can choose from over 30 categories of titles till you find one that tickles your fancy.

We couldn’t forget to mention the 3D titles feature with Wondershare Filmora. Gone are the days when creators would use 2D titles to introduce their videos to their audience. Even though not many content creators use 3D titles, you can be among the few that do and gain a competitive advantage. Ensure you peruse through the various categories and find one that speaks to you and fits the kind of content you create.

Below is a step-by-step guide on how to edit YouTube thumbnail text fonts.

Step1 Launch Wondershare Filmora on your device and select “New Project.”

Step2 Click on the icon shown below to import media from your device.

Step3 Drag and drop your photos as shown below to create your YouTube Thumbnail on the platform.

Step4 Add titles to customize the texts in your Thumbnail.

Step5 In the Titles panel, you can customize the font. Filmora offers hundreds of fonts for your choosing.

Step6 Select a still frame to be your thumbnail. Click the camera icon on the right side to take a snapshot.

Step7 The snapshot will appear on the Media panel. Right click the snapshot, and select “Reveal in Explorer” to locate it in your local drive. Then you can use it as your YouTube Thumbnail.

You don’t need to search for fonts on the Internet when Wondershare Filmora offers downloadable fonts. If you are interested in installing fonts in Filmora, watch this video to learn how.

Conclusion

As you generate thumbnails for your YouTube videos, it would be wise to ensure you make them full-sized. The ideal dimension for a YouTube thumbnail should be 1280*720. Since most of your viewers use their mobile phones to watch YouTube videos, it would help to ensure the thumbnail looks the same on your laptop and your mobile device.

A hazy or pixelated thumbnail could discourage the viewer from clicking on your video. We hope you have found a font you like and will incorporate it into your next YouTube video.

20 Best Fonts for YouTube Thumbnails To Bring Traffic to Your Videos

Your thumbnail is the first thing your audience will see as they browse on YouTube. Since you only have a few seconds to make a good first impression, it would be wise to make the most out of it.

YouTube thumbnails capture the viewer’s attention and spark their interest. The more eye-catching your thumbnail is, the more likely they will click on your video. If you take your time to make good thumbnails for your YouTube videos, you will undoubtedly increase your channel’s traffic and expand your reach.

Recent research reveals that YouTube thumbnails with text and numbers get more clicks than thumbnails with plain images. Therefore, choosing a great font to accompany your thumbnail would be wise and make it more visually appealing. Stick around for the fun part of the article, where we discuss twenty best fonts for your YouTube thumbnails.

1. Bebas Neue - Popular YouTube Thumbnail Font

The first YouTube thumbnail font on our list is a popular one known as Bebas Neue. You can use this font for your videos and thumbnails regardless of what content you post. The elegant yet sublime design makes it a perfect choice for you if you are just starting out or have yet to explore other options.

2. Impact - YouTube Thumbnail Font for Strong Sense

If you want a straightforward font for your thumbnail, look no further than Impact. Its strong sense makes it the best font for YouTube thumbnails. Even though it is versatile for any content, it is most frequently used on reaction videos, pranks, or reviews.

3. Montserrat - Good Font for YouTube Thumbnail

The letters in the Montserrat video are very simple, with the slightest shadowing and outline. This font is pretty versatile, and you can use it to make thumbnails for laid-back content or more serious and factual videos.

4. Alfa Slab - YouTube Thumbnail Text Font With a Futuristic Vibe

The Alfa slab font has a futuristic vibe to it, making it the perfect choice for content about new innovations or the future of technology. The blocky yet simple letters are easy to read and don’t take away from the main message or the background.

5. Againts - Best Font for YouTube Thumbnail

Suppose you post lots of travel content, share videos of you lounging on the best, or sample a new restaurant. The Againts font has a unique outdoor vibe that makes your videos pop and makes your audience anticipate where you will travel next.

6. Dancing Script - YouTube Thumbnail Font With a Sweat Vibe

The Dancing Script font is a must-have in your arsenal if you wouldn’t want your videos to be too serious. The slanted letters also give your thumbnail a feminine touch, making it great for fashion vlogs or videos about life hacks for ladies.

7. Oswald

The letters in this Oswald font are encapsulated in a dark grey rectangle, making them stand out and easy to read. You could use this font with other backgrounds in your thumbnail to highlight keywords you wouldn’t want your audience to miss as they scroll through YouTube.

8. Arial Negrata - Print Font for YouTube Thumbnails

We couldn’t forget to mention Arial Negrata, which has a beautiful print font and complementary sub-fonts. You can easily vary the fonts’ sizes for emphasis and to capture the interest of your audience.

9. BlackOpsOne - Best YouTube Thumbnail Font for Gaming Videos

Are you tired of the boring print fonts and girly cursive text? If you answer yes, you should check out the BlackOpsOne font, which is unlike anything you have ever seen. This font is perfect for gaming videos or content that involves long streams.

10. Beauty and the Beast

If you are a streamer, gamer, or like to post life hack videos on YouTube, you are probably looking for some good fonts for YouTube thumbnails to make your video less serious. The Beauty and the Beast font is very whimsical, giving your thumbnail a playful feel.

11. Chucklesome

You will immediately recognize this font if you grew up watching many cartoons and reading comic books. Chucklesome is another font with the best font color for YouTube thumbnails, making it an excellent choice if your YouTube channel is about games, movies, or comic books. The artsy typeface, bold letters, and bright colors can capture your audience’s attention from a mile away.

12. Caribold

As the name suggests, the Caribold font for YouTube thumbnails is very bold, and the letters almost jump out of the screen at you. The borders, outline, and shadows emphasize the font, making it hard to miss. You can use this font to create thumbnails for “How To” videos.

13. Bernhard - Serious YouTube Thumbnail Font

Depending on the content you post, you might want to discard the whimsical feel and give your thumbnail a more serious vibe. The Bernhard font is technically an enlarged script font that makes your videos and thumbnails look fresh and elegant. You can use this font for historical or factual videos.

14. Dustin Font Quartet

It is not uncommon for thumbnails to draw inspiration from other brands. The Dustin font is an excellent example of such a font, which is similar to the Supreme brand logo. This font is pretty versatile as it comes in a pack of four fonts, making you spoilt for choice!

15. The Tide - Chunky-Letter Font for YouTube Thumbnails

The Tide thumbnail font gives a relaxing beach vibe that would be great if you love posting laid-back content. This font also comes with chunky letters, which are easy to read and grab the attention of anyone scrolling through the platform.

16. Badaboom BB

The best font for YouTube thumbnail is Badaboom BB font, which has vibrant colors and unique letters. The red and yellow colors are an absolute showstopper and a must-have if you want your audience to notice you. This font style is excellent for gaming and streaming YouTube videos, where you just want your audience to have a good time.

17. River Drive

When inserting text into a thumbnail, you must balance the visual elements to ensure the letters don’t overshadow the image. The River Drive font allows you to create bold yet legible text without removing the stunning photo in the background.

18. Traveler Note

Adventure and travel channels help us know what it’s like to visit a place, even though we haven’t left our couches. The Traveler Note font brings life and cheer to your travel vlogs as you continue introducing us to different parts of the world.

19. Free Love Script

Perhaps your YouTube is missing that feminine touch to tie everything together. The curvy lettering in the Free Love Script is perfect for lifestyle videos or fashion vlogs, which could use a bit of femininity to drive the message home.

20. Config Rounded

If your channel is professional or you post informative content about finances, business, and other important topics, the best YouTube thumbnail font for you is the Config rounded font. It looks pretty modern and works well with any background.

Generate Cool YouTube Thumbnail Texts With Wondershare Filmora

If you have been making YouTube videos for a while now, then you must be familiar with Wondershare Filmora , a top-tier video editing tool. If not, we will discuss some of the features that make it a great editing tool in a short while. You can also use this platform to create and design the perfect thumbnail for your YouTube video.

Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

The title editing feature on this platform allows you to add creative text to your video and customize it as you see fit. You can also use Wondershare Filmora to make a title with customizable parameters. For instance, you can edit the text titles using three different fill types: color fill, gradient fill, and image fill.

Wondershare Filmora is an excellent tool to help bring your thumbnails alive and reel the masses in to view more videos from your channel. You cannot possibly exhaust the 107 animation styles, 12 types of shadow effects, and more than ten borders that make your text stand out from the rest. If you are unhappy with your current font, you can choose from over 30 categories of titles till you find one that tickles your fancy.

We couldn’t forget to mention the 3D titles feature with Wondershare Filmora. Gone are the days when creators would use 2D titles to introduce their videos to their audience. Even though not many content creators use 3D titles, you can be among the few that do and gain a competitive advantage. Ensure you peruse through the various categories and find one that speaks to you and fits the kind of content you create.

Below is a step-by-step guide on how to edit YouTube thumbnail text fonts.

Step1 Launch Wondershare Filmora on your device and select “New Project.”

Step2 Click on the icon shown below to import media from your device.

Step3 Drag and drop your photos as shown below to create your YouTube Thumbnail on the platform.

Step4 Add titles to customize the texts in your Thumbnail.

Step5 In the Titles panel, you can customize the font. Filmora offers hundreds of fonts for your choosing.

Step6 Select a still frame to be your thumbnail. Click the camera icon on the right side to take a snapshot.

Step7 The snapshot will appear on the Media panel. Right click the snapshot, and select “Reveal in Explorer” to locate it in your local drive. Then you can use it as your YouTube Thumbnail.

You don’t need to search for fonts on the Internet when Wondershare Filmora offers downloadable fonts. If you are interested in installing fonts in Filmora, watch this video to learn how.

Conclusion

As you generate thumbnails for your YouTube videos, it would be wise to ensure you make them full-sized. The ideal dimension for a YouTube thumbnail should be 1280*720. Since most of your viewers use their mobile phones to watch YouTube videos, it would help to ensure the thumbnail looks the same on your laptop and your mobile device.

A hazy or pixelated thumbnail could discourage the viewer from clicking on your video. We hope you have found a font you like and will incorporate it into your next YouTube video.

Best Practices for YouTube Video Brightness and Contrast

How To Light Your YouTube Video

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

When it comes to sensitivity to light, no consumer-level camera sensor comes close in performance to the human eye. Many newbies to videography, though, don’t think about this when they use their camera indoors and discover that their recorded footage appears too dark.

If you want to use your camera indoors as many YouTubers do, you’ll need to have extra light. But the solution is not as simple as surrounding yourself with lamps that are all randomly placed.

Below, I’ll go into detail on how you can set up your lighting equipment to make your YouTube videos look good.

Table of Contents Using Light You Already Have Window LightingHome Lighting Home Studio Lighting Light Control3-Point Lighting4-Point Lighting

Part 1: Using Light You Already Have

Most beginner YouTubers light their videos with what they already have. That’s what I did to start as well. In the past, my video recording space consisted of natural sunlight coming from my window and ceiling light for times when the sunlight wasn’t strong enough.

1. Window Lighting

The best thing about window lighting is that it’s free. The worst thing about it is that it’s uncontrollable. The amount of light you get in your video can vary with all the changes in the weather.

Window lighting for me was especially difficult to work with because I live in a very rainy and cloudy city, Vancouver, Canada, where we pretty much just get three months of good sun.

Above are two freeze frames from one of Daniel’s past window-lit vlogs. Although these two frames are both from the same vlog, you can see that the image on the right looks brighter due to clearer skies at that moment. These varying amounts of light is what you will have to deal with if you choose to light your YouTube video with window lighting.

2. Home Lighting

Home lighting is another source of light that many new YouTubers use. In the past, when my window light wasn’t strong enough to light my video recording space, I would turn on the ceiling light.

Notice how the color of Daniel’s skin looks much more orange here (above) than the color of the skin in the two side-by-side window lighting examples? The side of the face also appears to look bluer. This all happened because he mixed up different color temperatures shining out of the two lights (cooler window light and warmer ceiling light).

Most home lighting is warmer in its color temperature. If you want to use your home lights without everything being orange-tinted, you’ll need to switch out your light bulbs for daytime LED light bulbs.

Ceiling lights are also typically situated in the center of a room in order to light an entire room evenly. This is not likely to be the best location for your filming video. Since the ceiling light was directly above the face in the above example, you can see harder shadows beneath his cheeks.

Part 2: Home Studio Lighting

If you rather not deal with all the window and home lighting challenges, you can set up studio lighting in your home.

1. Light Control

The first thing you’ll want to do to set up studio lighting in your home is to pick a room to film in and eliminate as much external lighting as you can. Use blinds, curtains, towels, or any thick fabric to block sunlight from shining into your room.

2. 3-Point Lighting

The most common setup for studio lighting is 3-point lighting. For this kind of lighting you’ll need three lights: a key light, a fill light, and a back light (also called a hair light).

Out of the three lights, the key light should be the brightest. When it is positioned to the left of you (as shown in the diagram above) your right side will have shadows.

To minimize the shadows on your right side, use a weaker light as a fill light. You don’t want your fill light to completely eliminate all your shadows or else your shot will look flat.

Lastly, a backlight positioned behind you can give an appealing highlight to the ends of your head and even help to separate your hair from blending into your background if both happen to be dark.

3. 4-Point Lighting

As a YouTuber, you may not only want yourself to be seen optimally with proper lighting, but you may also want your background to be seen optimally, especially if you’ve taken the time to decorate it for your audience.

What you’ll need to ensure that your background is sufficiently lit is 4-point lighting setup. The 4-point lighting setup is the same as a 3-point lighting setup, but with an additional light shining at your background.

For more information on lighting equipment, check out my Top 17 Video Lighting Equipment For YouTubers .

Touch Up YouTube Videos with Filmora

Filmora is one of the best video editing software for YouTube beginners to start the YouTube channel. So, if you find the lighting isn’t perfect after recording, you can use the Auto Color Enhancement feature in Filmora to adjust the color with one-click. Or, you can change the white balance, Light, color, and HSL manually. Filmora also features some presets and LUTs templates , which allows you to apply pre-programmed effects to video for color correction faster.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

When it comes to sensitivity to light, no consumer-level camera sensor comes close in performance to the human eye. Many newbies to videography, though, don’t think about this when they use their camera indoors and discover that their recorded footage appears too dark.

If you want to use your camera indoors as many YouTubers do, you’ll need to have extra light. But the solution is not as simple as surrounding yourself with lamps that are all randomly placed.

Below, I’ll go into detail on how you can set up your lighting equipment to make your YouTube videos look good.

Table of Contents Using Light You Already Have Window LightingHome Lighting Home Studio Lighting Light Control3-Point Lighting4-Point Lighting

Part 1: Using Light You Already Have

Most beginner YouTubers light their videos with what they already have. That’s what I did to start as well. In the past, my video recording space consisted of natural sunlight coming from my window and ceiling light for times when the sunlight wasn’t strong enough.

1. Window Lighting

The best thing about window lighting is that it’s free. The worst thing about it is that it’s uncontrollable. The amount of light you get in your video can vary with all the changes in the weather.

Window lighting for me was especially difficult to work with because I live in a very rainy and cloudy city, Vancouver, Canada, where we pretty much just get three months of good sun.

Above are two freeze frames from one of Daniel’s past window-lit vlogs. Although these two frames are both from the same vlog, you can see that the image on the right looks brighter due to clearer skies at that moment. These varying amounts of light is what you will have to deal with if you choose to light your YouTube video with window lighting.

2. Home Lighting

Home lighting is another source of light that many new YouTubers use. In the past, when my window light wasn’t strong enough to light my video recording space, I would turn on the ceiling light.

Notice how the color of Daniel’s skin looks much more orange here (above) than the color of the skin in the two side-by-side window lighting examples? The side of the face also appears to look bluer. This all happened because he mixed up different color temperatures shining out of the two lights (cooler window light and warmer ceiling light).

Most home lighting is warmer in its color temperature. If you want to use your home lights without everything being orange-tinted, you’ll need to switch out your light bulbs for daytime LED light bulbs.

Ceiling lights are also typically situated in the center of a room in order to light an entire room evenly. This is not likely to be the best location for your filming video. Since the ceiling light was directly above the face in the above example, you can see harder shadows beneath his cheeks.

Part 2: Home Studio Lighting

If you rather not deal with all the window and home lighting challenges, you can set up studio lighting in your home.

1. Light Control

The first thing you’ll want to do to set up studio lighting in your home is to pick a room to film in and eliminate as much external lighting as you can. Use blinds, curtains, towels, or any thick fabric to block sunlight from shining into your room.

2. 3-Point Lighting

The most common setup for studio lighting is 3-point lighting. For this kind of lighting you’ll need three lights: a key light, a fill light, and a back light (also called a hair light).

Out of the three lights, the key light should be the brightest. When it is positioned to the left of you (as shown in the diagram above) your right side will have shadows.

To minimize the shadows on your right side, use a weaker light as a fill light. You don’t want your fill light to completely eliminate all your shadows or else your shot will look flat.

Lastly, a backlight positioned behind you can give an appealing highlight to the ends of your head and even help to separate your hair from blending into your background if both happen to be dark.

3. 4-Point Lighting

As a YouTuber, you may not only want yourself to be seen optimally with proper lighting, but you may also want your background to be seen optimally, especially if you’ve taken the time to decorate it for your audience.

What you’ll need to ensure that your background is sufficiently lit is 4-point lighting setup. The 4-point lighting setup is the same as a 3-point lighting setup, but with an additional light shining at your background.

For more information on lighting equipment, check out my Top 17 Video Lighting Equipment For YouTubers .

Touch Up YouTube Videos with Filmora

Filmora is one of the best video editing software for YouTube beginners to start the YouTube channel. So, if you find the lighting isn’t perfect after recording, you can use the Auto Color Enhancement feature in Filmora to adjust the color with one-click. Or, you can change the white balance, Light, color, and HSL manually. Filmora also features some presets and LUTs templates , which allows you to apply pre-programmed effects to video for color correction faster.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

When it comes to sensitivity to light, no consumer-level camera sensor comes close in performance to the human eye. Many newbies to videography, though, don’t think about this when they use their camera indoors and discover that their recorded footage appears too dark.

If you want to use your camera indoors as many YouTubers do, you’ll need to have extra light. But the solution is not as simple as surrounding yourself with lamps that are all randomly placed.

Below, I’ll go into detail on how you can set up your lighting equipment to make your YouTube videos look good.

Table of Contents Using Light You Already Have Window LightingHome Lighting Home Studio Lighting Light Control3-Point Lighting4-Point Lighting

Part 1: Using Light You Already Have

Most beginner YouTubers light their videos with what they already have. That’s what I did to start as well. In the past, my video recording space consisted of natural sunlight coming from my window and ceiling light for times when the sunlight wasn’t strong enough.

1. Window Lighting

The best thing about window lighting is that it’s free. The worst thing about it is that it’s uncontrollable. The amount of light you get in your video can vary with all the changes in the weather.

Window lighting for me was especially difficult to work with because I live in a very rainy and cloudy city, Vancouver, Canada, where we pretty much just get three months of good sun.

Above are two freeze frames from one of Daniel’s past window-lit vlogs. Although these two frames are both from the same vlog, you can see that the image on the right looks brighter due to clearer skies at that moment. These varying amounts of light is what you will have to deal with if you choose to light your YouTube video with window lighting.

2. Home Lighting

Home lighting is another source of light that many new YouTubers use. In the past, when my window light wasn’t strong enough to light my video recording space, I would turn on the ceiling light.

Notice how the color of Daniel’s skin looks much more orange here (above) than the color of the skin in the two side-by-side window lighting examples? The side of the face also appears to look bluer. This all happened because he mixed up different color temperatures shining out of the two lights (cooler window light and warmer ceiling light).

Most home lighting is warmer in its color temperature. If you want to use your home lights without everything being orange-tinted, you’ll need to switch out your light bulbs for daytime LED light bulbs.

Ceiling lights are also typically situated in the center of a room in order to light an entire room evenly. This is not likely to be the best location for your filming video. Since the ceiling light was directly above the face in the above example, you can see harder shadows beneath his cheeks.

Part 2: Home Studio Lighting

If you rather not deal with all the window and home lighting challenges, you can set up studio lighting in your home.

1. Light Control

The first thing you’ll want to do to set up studio lighting in your home is to pick a room to film in and eliminate as much external lighting as you can. Use blinds, curtains, towels, or any thick fabric to block sunlight from shining into your room.

2. 3-Point Lighting

The most common setup for studio lighting is 3-point lighting. For this kind of lighting you’ll need three lights: a key light, a fill light, and a back light (also called a hair light).

Out of the three lights, the key light should be the brightest. When it is positioned to the left of you (as shown in the diagram above) your right side will have shadows.

To minimize the shadows on your right side, use a weaker light as a fill light. You don’t want your fill light to completely eliminate all your shadows or else your shot will look flat.

Lastly, a backlight positioned behind you can give an appealing highlight to the ends of your head and even help to separate your hair from blending into your background if both happen to be dark.

3. 4-Point Lighting

As a YouTuber, you may not only want yourself to be seen optimally with proper lighting, but you may also want your background to be seen optimally, especially if you’ve taken the time to decorate it for your audience.

What you’ll need to ensure that your background is sufficiently lit is 4-point lighting setup. The 4-point lighting setup is the same as a 3-point lighting setup, but with an additional light shining at your background.

For more information on lighting equipment, check out my Top 17 Video Lighting Equipment For YouTubers .

Touch Up YouTube Videos with Filmora

Filmora is one of the best video editing software for YouTube beginners to start the YouTube channel. So, if you find the lighting isn’t perfect after recording, you can use the Auto Color Enhancement feature in Filmora to adjust the color with one-click. Or, you can change the white balance, Light, color, and HSL manually. Filmora also features some presets and LUTs templates , which allows you to apply pre-programmed effects to video for color correction faster.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

When it comes to sensitivity to light, no consumer-level camera sensor comes close in performance to the human eye. Many newbies to videography, though, don’t think about this when they use their camera indoors and discover that their recorded footage appears too dark.

If you want to use your camera indoors as many YouTubers do, you’ll need to have extra light. But the solution is not as simple as surrounding yourself with lamps that are all randomly placed.

Below, I’ll go into detail on how you can set up your lighting equipment to make your YouTube videos look good.

Table of Contents Using Light You Already Have Window LightingHome Lighting Home Studio Lighting Light Control3-Point Lighting4-Point Lighting

Part 1: Using Light You Already Have

Most beginner YouTubers light their videos with what they already have. That’s what I did to start as well. In the past, my video recording space consisted of natural sunlight coming from my window and ceiling light for times when the sunlight wasn’t strong enough.

1. Window Lighting

The best thing about window lighting is that it’s free. The worst thing about it is that it’s uncontrollable. The amount of light you get in your video can vary with all the changes in the weather.

Window lighting for me was especially difficult to work with because I live in a very rainy and cloudy city, Vancouver, Canada, where we pretty much just get three months of good sun.

Above are two freeze frames from one of Daniel’s past window-lit vlogs. Although these two frames are both from the same vlog, you can see that the image on the right looks brighter due to clearer skies at that moment. These varying amounts of light is what you will have to deal with if you choose to light your YouTube video with window lighting.

2. Home Lighting

Home lighting is another source of light that many new YouTubers use. In the past, when my window light wasn’t strong enough to light my video recording space, I would turn on the ceiling light.

Notice how the color of Daniel’s skin looks much more orange here (above) than the color of the skin in the two side-by-side window lighting examples? The side of the face also appears to look bluer. This all happened because he mixed up different color temperatures shining out of the two lights (cooler window light and warmer ceiling light).

Most home lighting is warmer in its color temperature. If you want to use your home lights without everything being orange-tinted, you’ll need to switch out your light bulbs for daytime LED light bulbs.

Ceiling lights are also typically situated in the center of a room in order to light an entire room evenly. This is not likely to be the best location for your filming video. Since the ceiling light was directly above the face in the above example, you can see harder shadows beneath his cheeks.

Part 2: Home Studio Lighting

If you rather not deal with all the window and home lighting challenges, you can set up studio lighting in your home.

1. Light Control

The first thing you’ll want to do to set up studio lighting in your home is to pick a room to film in and eliminate as much external lighting as you can. Use blinds, curtains, towels, or any thick fabric to block sunlight from shining into your room.

2. 3-Point Lighting

The most common setup for studio lighting is 3-point lighting. For this kind of lighting you’ll need three lights: a key light, a fill light, and a back light (also called a hair light).

Out of the three lights, the key light should be the brightest. When it is positioned to the left of you (as shown in the diagram above) your right side will have shadows.

To minimize the shadows on your right side, use a weaker light as a fill light. You don’t want your fill light to completely eliminate all your shadows or else your shot will look flat.

Lastly, a backlight positioned behind you can give an appealing highlight to the ends of your head and even help to separate your hair from blending into your background if both happen to be dark.

3. 4-Point Lighting

As a YouTuber, you may not only want yourself to be seen optimally with proper lighting, but you may also want your background to be seen optimally, especially if you’ve taken the time to decorate it for your audience.

What you’ll need to ensure that your background is sufficiently lit is 4-point lighting setup. The 4-point lighting setup is the same as a 3-point lighting setup, but with an additional light shining at your background.

For more information on lighting equipment, check out my Top 17 Video Lighting Equipment For YouTubers .

Touch Up YouTube Videos with Filmora

Filmora is one of the best video editing software for YouTube beginners to start the YouTube channel. So, if you find the lighting isn’t perfect after recording, you can use the Auto Color Enhancement feature in Filmora to adjust the color with one-click. Or, you can change the white balance, Light, color, and HSL manually. Filmora also features some presets and LUTs templates , which allows you to apply pre-programmed effects to video for color correction faster.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

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