I was visiting an office a while back and was offered a phone room to hold some meetings. The room was well-equipped with a comfortable chair, adequate lighting, a small table with a Neat Frame to easily join Teams calls, and even a blue accent wall to make it feel a little less sterile.

I went into the room a little before my call, used the QR code on the Neat Frame to link the device to my Teams account, and then did a quick preview of my video to assess how I looked for the call. I quickly realized that my face was unevenly lit and that the white wall behind my chair was blooming out, as the camera’s iris had to adjust to that bright white backdrop.

I looked up and noticed the light was at the edge of the room slightly behind me. Surveying the rest of the room, I quickly moved the table and chair to better align with the light position and to allow the blue wall to be my video backdrop.

Voila!

I had a dramatically better result.

I took a couple of screenshots from my computer camera in both positions so that you can see the difference. The original positioning of everything in the room produced the outcome you see here.

My quick rearrangement of the chair, table and Neat Frame resulted in the picture below.

 None of the equipment changed at all; it was just a repositioning in the same room. Here comes the importance of coordination with other trades and some foresight into setup beyond the AV equipment and furniture.

There was only one power outlet in the small room, so it likely dictated the location of the table and Neat Frame. My repositioning resulted in a cable on the floor. However, a power outlet on the opposite wall could have solved this issue easily.

With the Neat Frame fixed in position based on electrical placement, the chair then had to be positioned in front of the white wall and off-axis from the light. The end result was a less-than-stellar image in a room meant to be a dedicated video call room.

Even without adding more power to the room, painting the curved wall and moving the light over to an open bay in the grid could make a huge impact in this space.

Here is a quick diagram of the existing layout, the alterations I made ad hoc and the potential changes to the room that would require little facility impact but create a similar result.

The moral of the story is that coordination with other trades can be key to getting the proper outcome. Electrical and lighting placement, furniture layouts and paint coordination all make a dramatic impact on the systems that we provide and install. Even if we use all the “right stuff,” we can get less-than-desirable results.