Lonelygirl15 was a harbinger of things to come, because as anyone who has heard the real sound of horse hooves or sat on a jury knows: reality is unrealistic. The backgrounds of today can’t just be your bedroom. Why? Because your bedroom is probably visually boring, and doesn’t say anything about you.

So how do you design a modern vlogging background? Well, conventional wisdom might be: make it brightly colored, high contrast and have depth of field, like you do with your thumbnails.

Your colour choices can indicate your vertical. 94% of the top 50 beauty channels include strong pinks or whites in their production colour scheme.

You can also subvert your verticals expectations. For a long time gamers had drab, brown basement sets and PewDiePie stood alone with an absurd pair of brightly coloured headphones. These days, there seems to be an astonishing amount of focus on what kind of chair you have, and green screens are making a comeback.

But it’s not just about aesthetics — your vlogging background communicates something about who you are. When vloggers have their bed in the background, they are saying this is intimate. You’re literally in the most intimate space in their house. Booktubers have books in the background which instantly communicates “I’m a reader”. Science vlogger Alex Danis (who you may remember from our women in science article) has her lab in the background, which gives her both authority and authenticity.