Photo Tip Series: How to Style a Flatlay

While flatlays are meant to look effortless, the truth is sometimes they require a lot of effort! In this Photo Tip Series, I’m going to show you how to style a flatlay in just a few simple steps!

But first, a few things to know before you start playing around with the styling and curation. Personally, I always do the following 3 things when I shoot a flatlay:

3 sips for shooting the flatlay:

Tip 1. Use an iPhone. While I prefer my outfit shots to be taken on a DSLR camera, I find I can get better precision for flatlays when I snap them on my phone!

Tip 2. Always shoot in natural daylight. Your shot will always end up looking more crisp and clean, and you won’t have to fight with the colour balance or yellow-tinges from artificial lighting

Tip 3. Shoot in square mode. This will allow you to ensure all the elements are in the shot. If you shoot in regular mode, you’ll end up with elements too far apart and it will end up looking unbalanced.

7 steps for styling or curating the flatlay:

Step 1: Select your background. I love to use something simple; a faux fur rug I have from Ikea and/or this marble tabletop act as a minimal, textured background for the items to play front and centre. You can use anything from wood floors, to bedsheets, to white poster board to whatever else you have that’s convenient.

Step 2: Pick a theme or a purpose. In this case, I opted for a skincare and beauty focus, featuring only products with black and white packaging. Pick a colour scheme and stick somewhat close to it to ensure it doesn’t come across as messy, but be open enough to include accent colours to the mix to make it more interesting.

Step 3: Decide on your focal point. Whether it’s the most important item in your flatlay that you want to be the main focus or simply the item(s) in the middle of your flatlay, start from right in the centre of your shot.

Step 4: Add in accents and detail pieces throughout. I love to mix in jewelry like rings or earrings to add in both pops of gold/silver but also make the photo look more lived-in.

Step 5: Play with placement. Keep your placements fluid, so it doesn’t come off as too posed or “set up”. Try placing items in the corners of your image, just popping out like the bag with products is as seen below.

Step 6: Add in complementary objects. While my focal point was the skincare/beauty products, I added in a candle, sunglasses and leopard print mules to add dimension, texture, and colour to the photo. Without these “extras” or complementary objects, the flatlay would have looked pretty blah and more like makeup bag spill of beauty products as opposed to an effortless, chic array of essentials.

Step 7: Overlay your filter or preset to enhance the colour and mesh with your theme and voila! That’s how you style a flatlay to create a beautiful image, curated by none other than you!

Did you find these tips for how to style a flatlay helpful? Is there anything you learned about flatlays? If so, let me know in the comments! Also check out another post from my Photo Tip Series, How to Pose for Photos and Feel Confident!