Sharing simple stories on Instagram has become rather boring. They’re all about getting creative and presenting the best aesthetics you possibly can. One of the ways to get creative is to use background colors on your story.

While there’s no straightforward way to add a background color to your story, creative workarounds exist. And don’t worry. You don’t have to put in too much effort even if they are workarounds. Whether your story has a photo/ video or text and stickers, changing the background color is easy, albeit the processes are different. Let’s dive right in.

Changing Background Color for Story with Photo/ Video

Most of the time, we’re sharing photos or videos on our Instagram stories. Now, Instagram lets you adjust the image or video size so that it doesn’t fully cover the screen. If you do resize it, Instagram automatically picks a transparent color that best matches the photo on the screen as the background color.

But if you want to change this color, there’s no direct option. Thank god for workarounds, though. This one’s as simple as it can be.

Tap the ‘Your Story’ option or swipe right to get to the story screen. Then, choose the photo or video you want to share from your camera roll.

Tap the ‘three-dot menu’ in the upper-right corner of the screen.

Then, tap ‘Draw’ from the overlay menu that appears.

Drawing tools will appear on your screen.

There are two drawing tools you could use to get a background color. The first is the pencil tool that’ll get you a solid color in the background. The second is the highlighter color that’ll give a transparent background color. Tap the tool according to your preference.

Now, it’s time to choose the background color. You can either choose a color from the palette at the bottom of the screen – swipe left to see more colors. Or you can use the color picker to select a color from the photo itself. To use the color picker, tap it to activate it, and then, tap anywhere in the photo to pick that color.

Tap and hold your finger anywhere on the screen. The color you chose will fill the entire screen after a couple of seconds. For this example, we chose the highlighter tool, and as a result, the color applied is transparent.

Now, the catch is, that the color will cover even the photo/ video you used. You have two choices now. You can either use the eraser tool or the sticker option.

Using the Eraser tool. The eraser tool will work regardless of whether you chose a photo or video to share. But it can be somewhat imprecise and it might take you a few tries to get it right. Tap ‘Eraser’ from the toolbar at the top.

Then, carefully erase the color covering the photo/ video leaving the color to cover the background. Don’t be shy to use the Undo option to get it right. You can even experiment while erasing and create patterns instead of creating straight boundaries.

Using the Sticker option. If you want to share a photo on the story, you can also use the ‘Sticker’ tool. Unfortunately, if your goal was to share a video, the eraser tool is your only option as the sticker tool only lets you share photos.

Tap ‘Done’ to close the draw tool.

Then, swipe up on the screen to open the ‘Stickers’ panel or tap the ‘Sticker’ icon from the toolbar at the top. Scroll down the Stickers panel until you find the ‘Photos’ option.

Your camera roll will open. Choose the photo you want to share. Use two fingers to resize it and drag it with one finger to position it anywhere on the screen. You can even share multiple photos using this option.

Note: If you’re sharing a post to your story, this method works even then to change the background color. Moreover, it only changes the background color when sharing a post and doesn’t cover the post. So, you don’t have to use the Eraser tool to make the post visible.

Changing the Background Color in Create mode

Other than sharing photos or videos, using the Create mode to share stories is another popular use case of the feature. In the Create mode, you cannot share any photos or videos, but only text, polls, timers, GIFs, etc. If you’re using the Create mode to share your story, you can easily change the background color even then. And dare I say, it’s even simpler.

Swipe right to access the story screen and tap the ‘Create (Aa)’ button.

The page for picking the template for the story will open and it’ll automatically have a gradient background color. To change to one of the other available gradients or black and white backgrounds, tap the ‘Circle’ in the lower right corner of the screen.

When your template and the background color are selected, tap the ‘Shutter’ icon to use them.

Tip: If you want to use the gradient backgrounds as a background for your photo, you can add the photo as a sticker on top of the template. It’ll essentially hide the template.

Instead of using these preset backgrounds, you can also use the ‘Draw’ tool as used in the above section to use any color of your choice as background. Once you reach the screen that shows the options to share your story, tap the three-dot menu and choose the ‘Draw’ tool.

Then, choose the color for your background and tap and hold the screen until the background changes. Similar to when sharing a post, using the ‘Draw’ tool to change the background doesn’t cover the contents on your screen so there are no extra steps that involve using the eraser tool.

Complimentary background color can change the entire aesthetic of your story. Hopefully, this guide will help you share stories with beautiful background colors in no time.