Content Types
Using a simple background can elevate visual content with minimal effort on your part. The variety of possibilities for a subtle and minimal background is almost infinite. You can use photographic details of walls, images of nature, vector designs, seamless patterns, and cloth textures.
Simple backgrounds can be used for any of your visuals, from presentation slides and social media graphics to flyers, documents and even business cards. The positive aspect of a simple background is that it complements your content without getting in the way. Some minimal backgrounds are subtle but they also help convey the message better.
We have put together our favorite simple backgrounds for you to try on future projects. Some of these are available inside the Visme editor, while others can be found in Freepik and Creative Market.
The only limit is your imagination.
Here's a short selection of 8 easy-to-edit visual presentation templates you can edit, share and download with Visme. View more below:
From concrete-themed slides to textured walls, all of these minimal yet aesthetically pleasing, simple backgrounds can be found within the Visme editor. Simply sign up here with your name and email.
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Immerse your audience in the charm of nostalgia with this vintage-themed background. Featuring vintage guitars on a wall and an audio workstation, this black-and-white background adds an artistic and nostalgic element to your presentation.
Simplistic yet captivating, this high-quality desert background provides a serene landscape for your content. Its vastness and raw beauty help create an engaging visual journey for your audience during a presentation.
A geometric pattern will always look great as a simple background. This template has a subtle triangle pattern that can work with any type of content. Change the color of the overlay if this doesn’t match your brand or message.
Minimal design techniques work really well for presentations. A photograph of a simple architecture detail is both subtle and interesting at the same time. Add a color overlay for separation of the space and a nice visual flow.
Concrete slabs are the ultimate minimal architecture technique. They are also amazing as the background of a presentation. Subtle, powerful and easy to use, this template is perfect for creating a multi-slide presentation that won’t bore.
Gradients are the ultimate simple background for presentations. Choose colors that will match your story’s message or your brand. The amount of gradient backgrounds available out there is so vast that you will surely find the one you like. The template below uses a subtle yellow and grey for a smooth visual.
Adding a bit of nature to your slides is like bringing the outside in. The template below uses leafy details as visual focus points to give your presentation more depth. By switching the plants from slide to slide, your content instantly feels fresher.
Although it's not Van Gogh's masterpiece, this stunning picture of a starry night sky in a slightly blue hue can add a dreamy and celestial ambiance to your presentations. Make your content shine under the light of a thousand stars.
This subtle background looks technological and organic at the same time. It’s perfect for content with strong colors and powerful overlapping shapes. Try it out behind your photos, charts and infographic widgets.
Use a bird’s eye view photograph of a wave crashing on the beach for an interesting visual. The contrasting colors of the water and the sand will create a nice separation in the slide. The white letters on this template look great over the dark turquoise and the shore.
A cement wall with or without construction holes is a great, simple background because it can be used in lots of different ways. You can use it on its own or with color overlays in different tonalities and intensities. You can find cement walls that are sleek and others with industrial details like this one.
There is nothing as clean and as perfect as a full-color background. But add an object and your presentation background now tells a story along with your content. Make sure the object matches what you are presenting.
A white background will always look great with any type of any content. Add a black colored item to create separation and direction. It can be small or large, depending on what you want to achieve. You can repeat the same item on every slide or give it a bit of a different look to avoid repetition.
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A photograph of a cityscape is a very versatile simple background. It can be achieved in different angles; as a skyline at dusk, birds-eye view from a helicopter. The type of cityscape you choose will depend on your own style, but either way, it will give your slides a fun and interesting look.
A brick wall can make a nice background. There are brick walls in different colors and different textures. Choose the ones that have areas where you can place your content and color coordinate with the bricks for an added balanced feel. A brick wall texture as a background can feel urban or industrial depending on the type of bricks.
When a simple background has a few strong colors, you can eyedrop these colors to use them in your content. This technique will create an instant balance for your slides. Keep the same color palette for all slides though, don’t have a completely different palette for each background.
A zoomed-in section of an oil painting can make a great simple background for your slides. You can choose one with a texture like the one below, or another with less texture for a simpler look. Use the colors in the background to colorize the content so that it matches seamlessly together. To avoid repetition in your slides, use shaped crops in different ways to follow a line without overwhelming.
A sand dune is a calm and relaxed simple background that can look great for any kind of content you want to share. Take a cue from Apple, and try using dunes in different light situations; at dawn, at sunset or the middle of the day. Contrasting colors will look really good over a nice soft dune.
A simple black background doesn’t need to be just a black color, it can also be a macro photograph of something black like coal or tar. It will give your slides a deeper texture and a more interesting look to the story you want to tell. Choose a photograph that will show the texture through.
A marbled simple background can give your slides an interesting look with an elegant feel. Marbling can be a photograph of an actual slab of marble or an artistic representation with color paint on paper or even water. If use using a natural marble, try some contrasting color for the content. If using a strong marble coloring, use the same colors for the content with a light overlay to set it on.
Like I mentioned before, a white background is always the ultimate simple background. One of the ways to use a white background and elevate it is to add a colorful border. The template below uses a row of color cacti in white ceramic pots. If possible, coordinate the color edge with your brand colors or coordinate the content the other way around.
Monotone is a style of color palette that concentrates on one tonality with different intensities. A monotone can be achieved with a color overlay on any photo or image, but a grey monotone can be taken straight from an urban ambiance or details of things. This color style will give your slides a subtle elegance.
A sky full of clouds can be calm or stormy, it can be light blue or a sunset gradient. Choose the clouds in the sky image that best matches your content. The template below will help you get started with the visual idea; it’s a subtle cloud on an azure sky that will fit any content.
A moon phase photograph composition over a black background works great as a simple background for a science project presentation or any creative story that will look great with an interesting image. The fact that there is a moon doesn’t mean that it needs to be used for a presentation about moon phases. The template below will help you get creative with this idea.
If you need more distinctive images to complement the text in your presentation, Visme's AI image generator can help. This user-friendly tool enables you to produce engaging and unique visuals based on text prompts.
The AI-generated images can vary from realistic to imaginative, and you can tailor them to your specific design needs.
A little detail of a building can be quite interesting against a clean blue sky. The contrast between the color of the construction and the stark blue can be used as sections to place content or simply as a textured simple background. Depending on the type of building, it will give the image a different feel.
Slow shutter speed photographs of traffic and moving cars create beautiful images of color light streaks. These can be great simple backgrounds for your creative presentation. Like other colorful backgrounds, try different frame crops in different slides to prevent too much repetition.
Visme offers data visualization tools that can help you display important data in visually appealing ways. With over 30 data widgets, you can transform statistics and figures into meaningful graphics.
For dealing with more extensive data sets, you can choose from over 20 types of charts and graphs. You can customize them per your data requirements to create beautiful and understandable visualizations from complex data.
Green vegetation details can be done with any kind of plants, from really close up or a bird's eye view of a forest. The color green will give a healthy or nature related feel to the content. Use it when you want to have a non-intrusive colorful background that will relay a calm feeling to your viewers.
A neon light simple background can give your presentation a fun and interesting look. Maybe not the right choice for a corporate situation but definitely a good option for a creative pitch that needs a bit of a pop. You can choose a neon image with a message or even a neon illustration. This is definitely not the right background for every single slide but it will work great intermixed between other simpler designs.
Use a nostalgic simple background to give your presentations a nice and comfortable feel. Try vintage items like cassettes, old telephones or televisions, along with 80’s inspired color palettes. Minty greens, soft yellows, and pinks can make your viewers feel happy while looking at your content.
The color smoke trend has been big for a few years with creative photographers. Thanks to them, we have plenty of amazing color smoke photography to use as simple photography for our presentations. There are blue smokes, pink, red and purple smokes. Use a photo that pairs colored smoke with graffiti for an extra special image.
Enhance your images and add more special effects easily with Visme's AI image editing tools. With these tools, you can edit, touch up, unblur, upscale images, remove backgrounds, and do much more, all from simple text prompts.
The touch-up tools can help you create visually engaging presentations, making your ideas come to life in ways you never thought possible.
A photograph with two color sections can look great to separate areas of a slide. The template below is a photo of the edge of a pool on the bottom left and the water inside pool on the top right. Integrate color coordinated shapes to match the background and with titles in contrasting colors to stand out.
A photo of a surface of water can be subtle or quite strong, depending on which you choose to use. For example, in the template below, the water background is really soft and not at all the center of attention. The color of the water can be adjusted from turquoise to deep blue to further add a sense of calm or intensity to the background.
Light effects, like bokeh, can be used as a simple background to great effect. The lights can be small, big, colorful or subtle. Use this template for a fun and creative presentation that needs to keep the reader’s attention. Apart from round bokeh, you can also use bokeh in the shape of hearts or stars.
Customize your favorite templates and backgrounds in Visme with your team members using Visme's collaborative design features. Invite them via email or a shareable link and utilize features like live editing, commenting and annotating to ensure everyone's on the same page.
Discover how to do collaborative design right with Visme, or watch the video below to learn more.
A photograph of an industrial style wall, floor or metal paneling can also be a great image for a simple background. The intensity of an industrial background can make your slides look important and memorable. There are plenty of images, like the one below, that can help you get started with an industrial style presentation background.
A clean and even wood paneling image can be a great simple background design for your slides. This is the kind of visual that can be used on all slides since it’s not overwhelming or invasive. You can choose different colors of wood paneling or even a two-tone style like the template below.
A black simple background can be elegant, chic and sleek. If there is a white element in the image, it can help give direction to the content or create separations. Use bright colors for your text so that it stands out. But remember that classic white for longer text will always look best.
Bring an artistic touch to your presentations with this multicolored graffiti background. Infused with vibrant shades of red, orange and yellow, this abstract design embodies dynamism and creativity, adding a street art-inspired flair to your presentation.
Colorful watercolors can look really nice as simple backgrounds when the colors are light and subtle with a pop of color. These will also look pretty good with a color overlay so that it’s not as important as your content.
If you're struggling to come up with fresh and innovative ideas for your presentations, we've got you covered. Check out our article on 105+ creative presentation ideas to help you get started. This comprehensive guide covers everything from themes and visual aids to interactive techniques and tips to keep your audience fully engaged throughout your presentation.
Here are dozens more backgrounds you can use for presentations, desktop wallpapers or any other type of visual content. Simply click the button below to download them all at once to your local computer.
If you're looking for an artistic or abstract look, you can use this blue-and-purple design that emulates a hand-painted watercolor painting. This could be useful for student or teacher presentations on art, painting or design.
To evoke the feelings associated with nature and the outdoors—with a bit of magical wonder—you can go for this image background with a dark transparent overlay to make it easy to add text and preserve its readability.
For a simple landscape background, try this minimal design with outlines of mountains and hills. This combines well with presentations or visual content looking to create an adventurous and intrepid feel.
For the typical work environment background, you can use this image of a person typing on their laptop with a dark, transparent overlay, ideal for placing text on top.
This wavy-line pattern can be used in a variety of projects, as long as it doesn't interfere with the content on your page.
Geometric designs can add movement and vitality to your content, as in the case of this green-yellow-and-blue background.
If you want viewers to concentrate mostly on your content and limit distractions, you can go with this abstract lines background with only a few subtle design elements in the background.
This green-and-blue isometric cubes pattern can be used in almost any project as it adds visual interest and texture to your background.
Polygon backgrounds like these are in vogue nowadays as they add depth and perspective to your presentation and other visual content.
If you're looking for a festive background for your presentation, try this creative design with colorful geometric shapes such as circles, hexagons, lines and triangles.
To make your superimposed text stand out in contrast to the foreground, try this blurred background with hints of green and yellow lights.
If you're looking for something a little different, you can also try this colorful textured background with shades of blue, violet and pink.
Here is an example of a purple blurred background, useful for almost any type of presentation or visual project.
A slightly different variation of the one above, this blurred violet-pink background is perfect if you're going for a more vibrant and fresh image.
For a darker variation of the previous option, there's this purple background, which can be easily combined with text and other elements such as icons.
This colorful water background is ideal for any presentation as it makes it easy to superimpose your message without having your design elements take away too much attention from your text.
For classroom-related presentations or other visual material, you can use this image-based background with a soft, beige-colored overlay.
This coal-ash-colored design with mountains in the background is ideal for presentations or visual content where you want your light-colored text to stand out.
For a professional-looking, no-frills look, this image-based background with light-colored overlay works for most corporate presentations.
Color psychology experts often assert that blue signifies stability and trust, so it's no wonder it's a staple of corporate and other professional presentations. This blue gradient background is perfect for overlaying text and other design elements.
Since green comes in second for the characteristics often associated with the color blue, it makes sense that a lot of corporate presentations incorporate the hue in at least a part of their slide decks. This dark green background, for example, is ideal for any corporate slide deck that strives to communicate stability, balance and growth.
To infuse your slide decks with a little creative flair, you can use this peeled-paint background, useful for presentations related to art, design and student projects in general.
In addition to the water background above, this design -- evocative of the clear, blue water in a swimming pool -- is ideal for a presentation on water scarcity, water safety or anything related to this essential liquid.
For a humid, water-drops-on-glass look, there's this dark background that can easily be combined with textual and graphical elements while ensuring legibility.
If your goal is to have your audience concentrate solely on the content, consider opting for simple backgrounds , such as this lightly colored, shape-themed background. Simply overlay your text, images and icons to make your main message stand out.
To add a bit a perspective and texture to your slide deck, you can use a rippled background like the one above -- ideal for presentations or other visual content with an abstract, stylish feel.
For a dark, mysterious look, you can go for a background design like the one above.
This abstract, triangle polygon 3D rendering background is also ideal for superimposing other design elements and images.
This purple concrete wall background is a great way to liven up your presentation with a bit of color and texture to add visual interest, without detracting from the main message.
A variation of the previous purple concrete background, this design is also ideal for adding a bit of color and life to your presentation.
To refresh your project with an extra splash of color, try this purple-and-green watercolor background.
This dark-colored textured wall is perfect for slide decks with a rough, aged or grungy feel.
This vibrant background is perfect for any visual slide deck looking to catch viewers' eyes with a splash of color.
This abstract green background with design elements in the shape of waves can be used in virtually any type of presentation.
Perfect for student or school-related presentations, this graph paper background adds texture, depth and a visual theme to your presentation.
For a techie, modern look, you can go for this background with a subtle blue dotted pattern.
A variation of the previous background, this design is perfect for any understated yet stylish design.
This beige-colored design with geometric shapes is also a good option for corporate presentations with a more muted backdrop.
Another take on the previous option, this geometric design with a dash of blue and purple in the background is great for any type of presentation.
This vibrant yellow-striped background, evocative of the sun's rays, is a clean and fresh option for any lively presentation.
This purple background has rectangular elements at an angle to add some perspective to your slide design.
Another muted option perfect for overlaying text and images, this grey rectangle pattern background can be used in a variety of settings.
For a slightly more festive look, yet not too loud, you can always try this background with a variety of pastel-colored dots.
If you're looking to stray a bit from the norm, you can also go for a checkerboard look, which is muted enough to overlay text and other visuals.
This stylish green striped background can be used in a variety of visual content formats, such as collages, blog headers and social media graphics, among others.
This dark-colored diagonal background is another option for your slide deck, presentation or other visual content, as long as it doesn't take away from your main message.
This angled stripes background is another option for those looking to celebrate a birthday or any other special event with a colorful and lively presentation.
This polka dot pattern is another good option for festive occasions.
This abstract, 3D geometric pattern is another example of a muted background with a bit of texture and perspective.
Subtle specks in the background of this blue design make this a creative and youthful option for your visual project.
Add some variety to your slide deck with this geometric patter background with small triangles in the foreground.
This blue zigzag pattern is a good option for those looking to add visual interest to their presentation or other visual content.
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About the Author
Orana is a multi-faceted creative. She is a content writer, artist, and designer. She travels the world with her family and is currently in Istanbul. Find out more about her work at oranavelarde.com