Illuminating Your Content: YouTube Video Lighting Secrets

How To Light Your YouTube Video

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

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 Lighting Home Lighting Home Studio Lighting Light Control 3-Point Lighting 4-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

Hashtags that Elevate Your Channels’ Visibility & Value

Youtube hashtags have the power to get more viewers to your channel. Choosing the right ones at the right moment will help you grow much faster.

Knowing this, how do you know the perfect hashtags for YouTube?

The answer is simple. This guide lets you know precisely how to discover the best hashtags for YouTube. In addition, you’ll learn what tools to use and how to always find the correct tag for each video.

Bonus: Edit Your Vlog Videos Like A Pro With Filmora

Best YouTube Vlog Hashtags

Hashtags are powerful features that can connect the right viewer to your content. They merge videos and viewers with similar topics and interests.

If you have a vlog on YouTube, there is a set of hashtags that work perfectly with this type of content.

This is a list that might help:

#vloggingmylife
#vlogginggear
#vloggerlife
#vloggers
#vloglife
#vlogger
#vlogging
#youtuber
#vlogs
#dailyvlog
#vloggingcamera
#vloging
#vloggingcommunity
#vloggerlifestyle
#travelvlogging
#vloggingmum
#foodvlogging
#vlogginglife
#newtovlogging
#disneyvlogging
#vlogging101
#vloggingsetup
#vloggingfamily
#vlogday
#kidsvlogging
#imvlogginghere
#beautyvlogging
#microvlogging
#motovlogging
#instavlogging

When using hashtags for YouTube, it’s essential to put yourself in your viewers’ shoes. So first, ask yourself what your ideal viewer is searching for.

For example, if you’re creating a video on how to cook past, think about all the ways the viewer would search for this on YouTube. A few hashtags may come to mind are #pastarecipes, #pastacooking, #tasypasta, and so on. I hope you get the idea of how hashtags work.

This may take a lot of time. However, a YouTube hashtag generator can make this process a lot quicker and even more effective.

Best Tools for YouTube Vlog Hashtags

You should know that more than these thirty hashtags will be needed to help your videos succeed. But sometimes, you will need better or more appropriate ones.

The best way to always have the perfect tags is to use a YouTube hashtags generator. It’s a tool that digs up the ideal tags for every type of video.

Here are the three best YouTube hashtag generators you can use:

1 Keyword Tool

This tool’s primary purpose may be to help with keyword research, but it has a valuable hashtag extension.

First, type in the topic of your video. For example, “vlog.” Hit Search.

Then, select the Hashtags panel.

This will show you a massive list of trending hashtags you can use for your YouTube video. However, the YouTube tags it gives you will sometimes be different. For example, if you search for the same word at another time, the results may differ depending on current trends.

That’s all there is to it. Copy any tags you like and use them for your video. Also, you can purchase the pro version of this tool to get more detailed insights. However, the free version works just fine most of the time. The choice is yours.

2 TubeBuddy Chrome Extension

TubeBuddy is a Chrome extension that does much more for your YouTube channel than help with hashtags. It’s an optimization tool that will configure everything for better reach.

It’s also available as an Android and iOS app. As for the Chrome extension, you install it, and it integrates with YouTube.

The next time you upload a video, it will analyze it and help you process and publish it more quickly.

Additionally, TubeBuddy will also show you the best possible hashtags to use for your unique video. Over 1 million people use it. That should be proof enough that this tool truly offers something valuable.

3 VidIQ Chrome Extension

This is another Chrome extension that helps you find keywords and YouTube tags to get more views. It’s just as easy to use as the previous one. VidLQ has over 2 million users worldwide, proving its usefulness.

Plus, it has plenty of other features to help you grow your channel. For example, its Competitors Tool will give you insights into what similar channels are doing. VidLQ will also help you optimize your videos to get recommended to more viewers. As we all know, this can significantly increase your views.

It’s a great tool that can be especially beneficial for beginners. However, because of its simplicity, anyone starting on Youtube should use it. It does most of the publishing for you but teaches you how to do it yourself.

Note: If you hope to know more about YouTube keyword tools to get more views, you can read this article to increase your audience: 10 Best YouTube Keyword Tools to Get More Views

Bonus: Edit Your Vlog Videos Like A Pro With Filmora

Another way to get more YouTube views is to upload high-quality videos consistently.

By high quality, we mean no background noise, proper color grading, entertaining soundtracks, and similar. But, of course, you can be an experienced video editor to do any of this.

Filmora is an easy-to-use tool that lets you create professional videos quickly. With it, you can instantly remove background noise and search from a long list of copyright-free music. It also has a feature that edits videos automatically for you. For YouTube vlogs, this will export perfect results most of the time.

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

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

If you’re a more experienced video editor, Filmora’s also got you covered. Aside from its simple features, it also has an advanced editor. It allows you to touch up every tiny detail of your video if you feel like it.

It’s an all-in-one tool that YouTube creators recommend for YouTube creators. Best of all, it has features for users of all experience levels. As a result, you won’t have to watch countless tutorials on YouTube about how to use Filmora.

For example, to help you make your vlogs more eye-catching, we have prepared the video below:

Super EASY Video Transitions for Vlogs

Conclusion

Finding the best hashtags for YouTube is an easy but also important task. It’s all the little things combined that help you get more viewers. Things like using the right keywords, thumbnails, YouTube tags, etc.

Yet, it would help if you didn’t forget the most important thing: the video itself. So, give Filmora a try and become surprised by how easy it is to create a high-quality YouTube video.