In addition to changing your avatar on Twitter, you can change the background of your home screen from the default to another color or pattern. You can even upload an image of your choice (or do both).
You can tile an image (make it repeat, like tiles on a floor), make an image large enough to cover the entire background, or choose a smaller image that doesn’t cover the entire background and leaves a solid color behind it. Think of your home-screen background as the background that covers the desktop on your computer; it’s a nice way to customize your space, but only you will really see it.
To change your background, follow these steps:
Sign in to Twitter, and click the Settings icon on the top-right menu bar.
Choose Settings from the drop-down menu.
The Settings screen opens.
Select the Design tab.
Select a premade background, or use your own image or pattern.
The premade Twitter backgrounds appear in square thumbnail images inside the Design tab.
If you don’t want a standard Twitter look and want to use a background image or pattern from your computer, click the gray Change Background button below the pattern images. Choose the option titled Choose Existing Image from the drop-down menu, and browse through the images on your computer.
(Optional) If you want your image to tile, select the Tile Background check box.
Select the side that you’d like your image to align on: Left, Center, or Right.
If you want to change only your image, click Save.
(Optional) To customize your text and links, click the Background and Theme color fields.
You may want to make your Twitter page match the color scheme of your blog or website. If you can access the hexadecimal codes on your blog’s color scheme, you can enter those same hexadecimal codes in the appropriate fields. When you finish, click Save Changes to update your colors. If you mess up before you save your changes, you can always click Cancel or navigate away to retain your current color settings.
Hexadecimal codes are the six-digit codes used in website design to assign colors; each combination of numbers and letters corresponds to a different shade. The code 000000 is black, for example, and FFFFFF is white. Plenty of places on the web offer easy-to-understand guides to hexadecimal color codes. Check out Adobe’s Kuler if you’re looking for a nice color palette.
Select a black or white transparent overlay.
When you’re happy with your color scheme, click Save Changes.
If you’re using Twitter for business purposes, use your theme colors to reflect your company’s identity, matching the identity you’ve selected for your profile and header images.
If the default themes or images don’t appeal to you, or if you’re looking for something simpler or more casual, you can find free background images at a site such as COLOURlovers. COLOURlovers offers a variety of pattern graphics and color schemes, all of which are sized specifically to fit Twitter profiles.
If you’re feeling adventurous, you can hunt online for interesting background images on your own and upload them yourself. Just make sure that they’re the right shape and size.
Your background image is almost always overlaid with your Twitter stream, so you usually won’t be able to see the middle of the image. Your screen width dictates how much of your background you actually see.