Presenting on Zoom and Teams: setup, light, sound

By Alastair Greener, presenter of Present Yourself in a Minute · Updated 5 November 2026

Audiences forgive a plain background and a soft picture sooner than they forgive sound that is thin, echoey or cutting out. So the order for setting up a Zoom or Teams presentation is sound, then light, then the camera, then everything behind and around you. The advice below follows the online series from Present Yourself, the one-minute presenting tips made by Alastair Greener, and adds some practical points on kit.

Sound first: be heard

If people cannot hear you well, nothing else you do will matter. Here is the order of fixes, cheapest first.

1. Pick a quiet room. Soft furnishings help. A bare kitchen with a hard floor echoes.
2. Switch off notifications. Close your email, mute your phone and quit anything that pings. A banner sound lands in the recording for everyone.
3. Use earbuds or headphones. They stop the other people's voices coming out of your speakers and back into your microphone.
4. Add an external microphone. A wired headset or a USB microphone placed close to your mouth sounds much clearer than the one built into a laptop. The closer microphone hears you more than it hears the room.
5. Do a test call. Record yourself, then listen back with headphones on. Does it sound like you, or like you in a stairwell?

Light: in front, not behind

The most common problem is a window or a lamp behind the speaker, which turns them into a silhouette. Put the main light in front of you, above or just behind the camera so it falls on your face. A window is free and works well in daytime, provided you face it rather than sit with it at your back.

If the room is dim, a lamp placed behind your laptop and pointing at the wall or ceiling gives a soft light on your face. Avoid anything harsh and close that makes you squint.

Check by looking at yourself in the preview before the call. If your face is darker than the wall behind you, the light needs to move.

Camera: eye level and one lens

Most people present looking down at a laptop. The camera sees up your nose and the viewer sees a forehead and a ceiling. The fix costs nothing: stack the laptop on books until the lens is level with your eyes.

• Use an external webcam if you can. It is usually better than a built-in one and can sit at the right height on top of a monitor.
• Frame head and shoulders. Leave a little room above your head, not a lot. A common mistake is to sit so far back that the audience cannot read your face, or so close that every movement looks large.
• Keep the same framing whether you sit or stand. Either is fine, whichever feels more confident to you. If you stand, plant your feet with equal weight on each, and keep the picture the same.
• Move your hands out of frame or properly into it. Gesturing even when no one sees your hands puts energy in your voice. If they are in view, let them be fully in view, not hovering at the bottom edge.

Eye contact: look at the lens

The natural thing is to watch the faces on screen. To the viewers, that looks as though you are looking just below them. Look at the lens when you speak and glance at the faces when you listen.

Make it easier by:

• Putting the Zoom or Teams window as small as it will go, and parking it directly under the camera, so that the faces are close to the lens.
• Moving the participants' thumbnails to just under the webcam.
• Placing the chat box near the camera so your eyes stay close to it when you read.
• Sticking a small arrow on either side of the camera to bring your gaze back.
• Hiding your self-view. Watching yourself is distracting, and it makes you critique your face instead of talking to people.

Record a few minutes and play it back with the sound down. You can see at once where your eyes go.

Background and clothes

Plain beats clever. Sit a few feet in front of a plain wall, and look at what is behind you before you join. A pile of washing, a half-open door and a large yucca plant growing out of your head all appear on the screen. Blurred and virtual backgrounds can glitch around hair and hands, so avoid them unless you have tested them. If you use a green screen, check the edges for flicker.

Dress as you would in person. A few things behave badly on camera:

• Small checks and narrow stripes can shimmer.
• A top that matches the background makes you look like a floating head.
• White can glare against a light wall.

Our guide to what to wear on camera goes into more detail.

Be a person on screen

On camera, the face is nearly all your audience sees, so it needs to work harder than it would in a room. Be slightly more energetic than usual, smile when it fits and sit back far enough that your posture can change as you speak. Lean in when you want to make a point. Eyes darting off to a second screen show up straight away, so if you are checking notes, make them keywords, kept near the lens.

Being a good audience matters on a call as well. The guide to being a good audience on camera covers it, and so does running a better online meeting if you are the host.

Kit list

Do not buy anything until you have tried the free level. Most of the improvement comes from placement, not purchase.

If the call matters more than a spare room can handle, such as a keynote or an important interview, a studio takes the setup off your plate. Our remote interview studio is built for that, with studio microphones, 4K cameras, proper lighting and fibre internet.

The hour-before check

1. Update Zoom or Teams. An update that starts as you try to join is the cause of many late starts.
2. Test your connection and kit at least an hour before you go live. That leaves time to fix a problem rather than apologise for it.
3. Join your own session on a phone as well, over 4G or 5G. You can see what the audience sees, and you have a backup if your main connection drops.
4. Switch off notifications and close other apps.
5. Check your framing, light and sound in the preview.
6. Have water to hand, at room temperature.

Common mistakes

• Fixing the picture and ignoring the sound. Start with the microphone.
• Light behind you. Turn around.
• Camera too low. Books under the laptop.
• Looking at the screen, not the lens. Put the faces under the camera.
• Updating the software at the last minute. Do it in the morning.
• Never watching yourself back. Record a test and look at it.

Related guides

• Running a better online meeting: the 10-minute rule
• Being a good audience on camera
• All guides and tools

The picture at the top of this page is an illustration, not a photograph of a client or a real job.