Creating a Video Background on Your Website with HTML and CSS

A video background refers to a video clip or footage that is used as the background of a website. It is often used to enhance the visual appeal of the content and to create an immersive experience for the viewer. We will go over how to create a video background with HTML and CSS in this tutorial. A GitHub repo has been provided with the and . starter files full source code You can also check out the : live version Prerequisites This tutorial assumes that you have a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS. Why video background? Video backgrounds can create an eye-catching and immersive user experience. They allow you to showcase high-quality visual content and set the mood or tone for your website. When the correct video is used, a video background is an easy yet effective approach to distinguish your website from the billions of other websites online. Getting Started We will use the following to create our video background: HTML Element. video HTML Element. source CSS styling. Video HTML Element The HTML element embeds a media player which supports video playback into the document. To create the video background, we add a element to the HTML code with the , , , and attributes: playsinline autoplay loop muted Each of the video attributes plays a role in making the background video work: makes the video play on iOS. playsinline makes sure that the video starts playing as soon as the page loads. autoplay enables the video to play continuously without stopping. loop removes the video sound. muted 💡 Note: We didn't include control attributes because we don't want the user to be able to control our videos. That is, we don't want them to play/pause our video. Our screen shouldn’t display any video at this point: Source HTML element The will be used to provide multiple resources for our video element. This means that we can provide different formats( and **** ) ****of our video. source element .mp4 , .webm , .ogg A video with different formats has been provided in the Github repo. Our screen should display the background of our video at this point: Styling the video with CSS There are different ways to style our video background. We can make it a full-page video background or take just a section of the website. We will look at the latter in this article. Some CSS properties will be given to the to make our styling possible: header enables us to control where to place the video relative position constraints the height of the video fixed height .cont { position: relative; height: 85vh; } Our video element will have the following CSS properties: sets the position of the video position sets the vertical and horizontal position top & left & sets the dimensions width height sets how the video should be resized to fit its container( ) object-fit places the video behind the content z-index .video { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; object-fit: cover; z-index: -1; } Now that our video background is prepared, how about adding some content to it? Let’s go ahead and add our header title. Our screen should have a fully styled video background at this point: Adding content to the video background We‘ve set our video into place. Now we can add whatever content we want on top of it. Let’s add a title like so: # .... Welcome to my website. Then go ahead and update our CSS: .cont { /* add this */ display: flex; align-items: center; justify-content: center; } .h1 { color: #fff; font-size: 5rem; } We can even make the visibility better by adding an overlay: # .... Welcome to my website. Our CSS should be updated like so: .video { z-index: -2; } .overlay { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5); z-index: -1; } Our screen should have the content on the video background at this point: Conclusion Video backgrounds are a versatile tool for web design. With some creativity, you can achieve unique results that align with your brand and goals. Have fun with it! To summarize, here are the main steps to create a video background: Add a element to your HTML with the necessary attributes ( , , ) autoplay loop muted Include elements to provide video files in multiple formats (mp4, webm, ogg) Style the video with CSS ( , , , ) position dimensions object-fit z-index Add content on top of the video and style it as needed Consider adding an overlay to improve text visibility You can even take it further by: adding a attribute to the video poster making the background a full-page Overall, video backgrounds are an impactful way to enhance your website and leave a lasting first impression on visitors. With some experimentation, you can create unique results that are tailored to your brand and goals. Have fun with it! Also published here.