Recently, I highlighted blogs and websites displaying custom colors and custom fonts, which you can enable on your own site with a Custom Design upgrade. Today, let’s look at a free way to easily transform your site: a custom background.

If chosen carefully, a custom background can reveal a lot about your site’s focus, as well as your overall aesthetic. I asked a few users about the backgrounds they’ve uploaded to their sites, and how they chose them:

Gherkins & Tomatoes, Biscuits & Gravy

Cynthia, the writer and photographer behind Gherkins & Tomatoes, Biscuits & Gravy, focuses on the cuisine and rich history of the American South. Her background caught my eye immediately — it enhances and unifies her image-oriented site.

Gherkins & Tomatoes, Biscuits & Gravy

Tell us about your custom background. Why did you choose it?

I downloaded this background from GRSites, which has all sorts of textures. I love the tiled effect with my customized Gridspace theme. I chose this image because it looks like a lot of buildings in the American South, where the weather wreaks havoc with paint on exterior walls, especially old out-of-the-way restaurants. Since my blog primarily covers the food history of the American South, I wanted something that conveyed the time-worn look of the white frame houses so common in the American South, the “homeplace” where so many people remember eating grandma’s cornbread and soup beans, sugary pies, and fluffy cakes.

Got any tips to share with users who want to upload a custom background?

If your blog contains a lot of photos, as mine does, be sure the background doesn’t detract from your main content area. You don’t want things to look too “busy.” The background design should complement everything else that the reader sees. It should also convey something about your blog’s main focus.

I’ve also played around with quite large files for backgrounds and these also work well, provided there are large expanses of color or shapes in the image. Why is this important? If the larger image has too much detail in it, it will tile in such a way that distracts the reader from what you’ve featured on your blog. If, on the other hand, your blog content doesn’t rely so much on photos or graphics, you can use a pretty busy background.

Thanks for your tips, Cynthia!

A Weirder Fetish

The front page of Vanessa’s travel blog, A Weirder Fetish, is packed with photography, from the large featured images in the slider to the thumbnails down the sidebar. Her whimsical, illustrated header is colorful and prominent. So, I like her choice of a subtle, light gray pattern because it doesn’t overpower, yet still adds texture and contributes to her theme of wanderlust and exploration.

A Weirder Fetish

Tell us about your custom background. Why did you choose it?

I chose a group of houses as my custom background, so that the tiled effect would display rows and rows of a closely-knit populated town. It creates the sense that every single place in this world is connected to each other in one way or another — that we are not too different after all. It has always been my dream to travel to places like Italy one day (the streets of Naples, for example). This background also serves as a constant reminder to achieve this dream!

Got any tips to share with users who want to upload a custom background?

Your custom background shouldn’t stand out too much because after all, the main content lies in the posts you upload. A tiled custom background should be kept simple and spaced out so it allows for comfortable reading. Start with something close to the theme you’d like to present. More importantly, choose imagery you really love, for you are possibly the number one visitor of your own blog.

Great advice. Thanks, Vanessa!

Now, it’s your turn!

Most of our themes on WordPress.com allow you to upload a new background image, select an existing image from your Media Library and set it as the background image, or select a color. Go to Appearance » Background in your dashboard. If you don’t see this option, your current theme does not support the custom background feature. But don’t fret — in the Theme Showcase, you can browse the themes that support custom backgrounds.

After you’ve uploaded a background image or selected one from your Media Library, you’ll see Display Options. You can:

• Position your image on the left, center, or right of the page.
• Set your image so it repeats (the “tiled” look that Cynthia and Vanessa describe above) or doesn’t repeat — you can tile the image vertically and horizontally throughout the entire page, tile horizontally only, or tile vertically only.
• Set your background to “scroll” with your content, or stay “fixed” in place when a viewer scrolls down the page, as shown on both Cynthia and Vanessa’s blogs above.

If you don’t want to display an image but still want to transform your background, play around with the color wheel. If you know the exact hexadecimal value of the color you want to use, enter it directly into the color field.

If you prefer to pick a color from the color wheel, click on the Select Color link beside the box, which opens up the color wheel. When you have found the color you want, click Save Changes.

Need inspiration?

Here are examples of other blogs with custom backgrounds:

• Design by Lulu: A pretty site with a matching patterned background and pastel header. In fact, Lindsay’s background is the same image on her business cards. This visual consistency is smart — it makes you and your brand recognizable.
• One Theology: A site focusing on discussions and ideas about theology and philosophy. The black-and-white scheme and uppercase font in the header create a bold and sleek site, and the lettering displayed in the background enhances the design.
• New Girls About Towns: A blog by two gals, Ellie in London and Sara in New York. They take advantage of the Confit theme’s full-page background with bright, playful illustrated city icons that match their site’s custom header. Note: With Confit, an individual page can have its own background image (to do this, just set a featured image to that page).

Don’t have your own image to use and want pattern and texture ideas? In addition to Cynthia’s suggestion, GRSites, poke around on these sites:

• Subtle Patterns
• My Site My Way
• Squidfingers