We all strive to be Instamasters. We’ve also all been scrolling through Instagram and have seen that one social media guru or travel blogger with the perfect account. It has a theme, it has relatable captions and it often has flat lay photos. The flat lay is a staged display of items in a visually appealing pattern against a typically white background, photographed from a direct overhead angle. It’s a staple of Instagram blogging accounts.
Since Her Campus at UCLA just received our spa-themed Holiday Survival Kits, we wanted to share a few tips on how you can show off goodies or beauty products with the famous flat lay style.
1. Choose a mix of branded and non-branded items.
For our HC Survival Kits, we received quite a few cosmetic products: Rimmel London Natural Bronzer, Provocalips Kissproof Lip Colour, Scandaleyes Waterproof Kohl Eyeliner and Scandaleyes Original Mascara. We also were sent 7 Wonders facemasks from Leaders Cosmetics, Yogi tea bags and the Book of the Month. Pure Silk Shave Creams also arrived in our Holiday Survival Kits, but it didn’t fit with my flat lay themes, which usually surround facial cosmetics or cozy days in bed. Know what works for your style.
It’s also essential to mix your branded items with non-branded items. I grabbed a few cute things from around my apartment – my tortoise shell glasses, InStyle magazine, a small pumpkin, a watch and a tea mug. These are some staple items that appear in many flat lays. If you’re wondering what to use, think school supplies, jewelry or other adorable household gift-style items.
See how strange the flat lay would look if I just forced all of my branded items into one image? Tea doesn’t relate to lip colour. Books don’t relate to mascara. Flat lays are meant to look like a snapshot of your work space or make up counter – an unposed situation that is inherently posed. By throwing together a random assortment of goods, we have no theme or message. It looks like a mismatched advertisement opposed to a fun piece of content for a fashion blog. Collect non-branded items to diversify your flat lay.
2. Find a place with good natural lighting.
Sure you can always edit photos, but they look so much better when the raw images have good lighting to begin with. It starts with photographing adjacent to windows (and if you have a DSLR camera, make sure the light meter is at 0 and not too dark). As you can see above, dark images aren’t appealing to the eye and mute the colors. Natural lighting will improve the quality of the image as well.
3. Make flat lays with items of different shapes and sizes.
Using three make up products here doesn’t make for a dynamic or visually appealing photo, which is a goal of flat lays. One bigger item should draw the eye in and little items placed around it will balance the blank white space. One good tip to glean from this otherwise poor flat lay is the action involved in opening the mascara bottle. It’s much more powerful than three straight bottles. Opening it creates movement and captures everyday motions, similar to a still life painting.
4. Make sure your objects compliment one another.
The problem with pairing these two items together is their shapes and purposes. Not only would I never be reading a book at the same time I’d be using bronzer, but they also aren’t complimentary shapes. The roundness of the bronzer and the rectangular book seem like a round hole and a square peg, quite literally. It looks clunky and displeasing.
In this picture we improve a little by tiling the book inwards. It looks a bit more natural, and spontaneity is something I believe all good flat lays have. We know they are posed, but the scattered placement, opposed to side-by-side placement, looks more Instagram-worthy.
To improve the non-complimentary items, I added in my glasses to fill some of the awkward white space and to create angles with its tilt. It also relates to the book narrative (because glasses go with reading). Still this is not the best flat lay because the make up doesn’t work with a reading theme, and I’d like to add in some smaller items to make a more cohesive image.
5. Angles angles angles.
I cringe at this photo. If there’s anything more important than the spontaneous look of a neatly cluttered workspace, it’s the angling. I want items on the right half of the photo to generally tilt towards the right and photos on the left half to generally point left. But I also don’t want symmetry, so one item would have to be shifted up or down to create balance in the photo.
In this photo, the tea bag should not be parallel to the facemask, but instead tiled left. Likewise, the mascara and lip colour’s framing of the tea bag is too artificial. The trinkets should work together in harmony to fill the space, opposed to create recognizable patterns. It’s truly an art to design a pattern that doesn’t look like a pattern.
6. The goal: have a theme and have balance.
Finally we get to some good examples! First I sorted the items to have a theme, whether by color or by uses of the items. The first image (above) has a beauty theme because it tells the narrative of someone interested in fashion. I have my watch for delicacy, my InStyle magazine for a centerpiece item and my Rimmel London beauty products to show them off and convey the fashionista narrative. Note the open lip colour for a pop of movement and also note that I matched the colors – the tan of my watch with the bronzer and the lip colour with the magazine. I tilted my props in angled directions, I have a good balance of white space and I created a narrative. Good to go.
The mascara was the most difficult item to work with of the Holiday Survival Kits since it’s such a bright, unnatural orange color that didn’t really fit in my palette. I ended up using a fall color scheme. The Kalahari Melon Moisturizing Mask had orange and green colors, which combined with my light orange pumpkin fit with the fall palette.
And last I have my reading narrative. This included the glasses and my tea mug. I layered the Yogi tea bag on top of the Book of the Month so I wouldn’t have too many rectangles against the white background. The tea cup makes the scene look naturally posed and my glasses make sense next to the book. My colors here aren’t as spot-on as in the beauty flat lay, but at least oranges and browns and reds are all warm colors.
For all you Instamaster wanna-bes, I hope this helped give some tips for the perfect flat lay. And of course, it helps to have some stellar products to show off. My advice aside, you need interesting subjects to photograph like these lovely goodies from our Holiday Survival Kits – from tea to make up to books.