What to Do Before a Property Photographer Arrives
A checklist for houses going on the market and for holiday lets, built around what a camera sees that your eye has stopped noticing.
The best-prepared house I have photographed this year was a period property in Leiston. The beds were made, the towels were out, the pictures were on the walls and the rooms were dressed before I got there. It is not always like that, and the difference shows in the finished set.
None of this is about turning a place into a show home. It is about clearing the small things that pull a viewer’s eye away from the room itself. Most of it is free and most of it takes an hour.
If you only have an hour, do these six
- Clean the windows, inside and out
- Clear every worktop, bedside table and bathroom surface
- Make the beds with bedding that matches
- Check every bulb works
- Move the cars and the bins
- Open all the curtains and blinds fully
Everything below is the reasoning, and the detail if you have longer.
Free download
Take the checklist with you
A two page printable version of everything on this page, with tick boxes. Useful to hand to whoever is getting the property ready.
Four things a camera does that your eye does not
This is the part worth understanding, because once you know it the rest of the list explains itself.
It flattens the room, so clutter turns into mess
Standing in your kitchen, your eye moves around and edits things out. You have not properly seen the bin by the back door or the magnets on the fridge for about four years.
A photograph has none of that. It compresses everything onto one flat plane at the same level of attention, so the charger cable on the worktop competes with the worktop. Ordinary life reads as clutter the moment it is flattened.
The quickest way to see your own house the way the camera will is to photograph each room on your phone and then look at the picture instead of the room. Things leap out on a small screen that you walked past all morning.
It cannot casually ignore a bright window
Your eyes handle a dim hallway and a sunlit garden in the same glance without you noticing. A camera cannot do both at once.
In that Leiston house there is a frame from the hallway, past the utility, through to the dining room with the garden beyond. Something like five stops of brightness between the darkest corner and the greenery outside. Holding all of it takes several exposures blended together, and that frame is usually the one that explains the whole layout.
Which is why dirty glass matters more than it sounds. Streaks, smears and cobwebs sit in exactly the part of the picture I have worked hardest on. If the outsides are high, book a window cleaner as soon as the shoot is in the diary rather than the week of.
It records two bulb colours as two different rooms
This one nobody mentions and it causes me more editing time than anything else on this page.
If a ceiling fitting has one warm white bulb and one cool white bulb, your eye evens it out and you genuinely do not see it. The camera records one half of the room going orange and the other half going blue. Correcting it afterwards is slow and never comes out quite clean.
So walk round with the lights on and look for it. Matching the bulbs in a single room is a five minute job before the shoot and an hour of fiddling afterwards.
It sees itself, and me, in every reflective surface
Mirrors, glass cabinet doors, a polished hob, a shower screen, the black rectangle of a television. All of them can throw back the camera, the lighting or me standing in the corner.
I work around it, and it is a normal part of the job. It is much easier when the surfaces are clean, because limescale on a shower screen and smears on a mirror are the parts that cannot be worked around.
Room by room
Kitchen
- Clear the worktops down to one or two things you would genuinely leave out
- Strip the fridge door completely
- Washing-up liquid, bottle brush and sponge out of sight
- Move the bin out of the room
- Tea towel off the oven handle, or a clean one hung square
- Wipe the hob and splashback. Shiny surfaces show every mark once light hits them
- Empty the sink and dry it
Living room
- Cables. Behind the furniture, taped down the back of the unit, whatever it takes
- Remotes, chargers, magazines and toys out of shot
- Television off. A dark screen photographs better than a paused menu
- Straighten cushions and throws, but do not karate chop the cushions
- Coffee table down to one thing
- Drying rack out of the room, and out of the hall
Bedrooms
- Beds made properly with bedding that matches. Mismatched pillowcases are obvious in a photograph even when nobody notices them in the room
- Bedside tables cleared of glasses, chargers, books and medication
- Wardrobe doors and drawers shut fully
- Floor clear, and under the bed too if the bed sits high
- Washing off the back of the door
Bathrooms
- Every toiletry, razor, toothbrush and cleaning product into a cupboard
- Toilet seats down, brush out of sight
- Towels matching and hung straight. Two clean towels beat five mismatched ones
- Bath mats straight or put away
- Mirror, taps and shower screen wiped
Hallway and stairs
- Shoes away rather than lined up
- Coats off the bannister
- Post and parcels out of sight
- Clear the space inside the front door, which is often the first frame of the set
A note on the floor. I keep verticals straight, which means the camera sits at a fixed height rather than tilting up or down. One effect of that is you see more floor than you expect in a finished picture, so anything low down, shoes, cables, bins, pet bowls, shows more than it feels like it should.
Outside, and the weather
The exterior is usually the first picture anyone sees.
- Cars off the drive and away from the front if you can manage it, including a neighbour’s if they will oblige
- Bins round the back
- Hoses coiled or removed, bikes and toys put away, side return cleared
- Cut the lawn a couple of days before rather than the morning, so the clippings have gone
- Sweep the path and pull the weeds out of the joints
- Clean the front door and its furniture, and make sure the house number reads clearly
- Garden furniture out, and cleaned first
- Take down anything seasonal that has stayed up too long
On the weather, do not worry about it. A Suffolk lawn at the end of a dry August is never going to look like May, and fighting that is pointless. What I will do instead is let the sky carry the frame and wait for the cloud to be worth having. Standing about for twenty minutes to get that costs nothing and it is usually what makes the exterior.
If the property is a holiday let
A guest books from the pictures alone and never gets a viewing, so a little dressing genuinely helps.
- Beds made with the bedding a guest will actually get, not the good set from the airing cupboard
- Towels out, folded, matching
- Lay the dining table lightly. Plates and glasses, not a dinner party
- Outdoor furniture out even if it is October
- Set out anything that forms part of the offer, such as a welcome tray, a log basket by the stove or a travel cot
Then the important one. Take away anything a guest will not actually get. If the coffee machine goes home with you between lets, it should not be in the photograph.
The whole job is to make the property look like itself on its best day, so that expectations match reality when the key comes out of the lockbox. A guest who books because of something in a picture and does not find it on arrival writes the review that costs you the next ten bookings.
There is more about how I approach these on my holiday let and Airbnb photography page.
If the property is going on the market
The balance shifts. A buyer needs room to picture themselves there.
- Thin out family photographs, certificates and children’s artwork, without stripping the walls bare
- Put away anything that ties the property specifically to you
- Reduce toys to a token amount rather than erasing all trace of children
- Clear the study or spare room enough that its real size reads
- Leave it looking lived in and looked after
Depersonalised and sterile are not the same thing. A house with no sign of life in it photographs cold, and cold does not sell.
What I would not bother with
If a thing is clean, working and reasonably neutral, leave it be.
I would not fit a kitchen, refit a bathroom or repaint every room magnolia for the sake of photographs. Fresh silicone round the bath, a deep clean of the grout and a clear worktop will do more for the picture than a new worktop will, at a fraction of the cost.
I also do not need artificial flowers, bowls of fake fruit or a bought-in vase of lilies. If the room does not normally have them, it tends to look staged, and staged is exactly what makes people suspicious of a listing.
Small repairs are worth it where they are visible and quick. A dripping tap, a loose handle, a cracked tile by the sink. Not because a buyer expects perfection, but because visible neglect makes people wonder what else has been left.
What I need from you on the day
- The property finished before I arrive rather than tidied while I work, so I can move through in a sensible order
- Lamps on and main lights on
- Pets somewhere out of the way, with bowls, beds and litter trays moved
- A word about any room that is not being photographed
- If something needs shifting, say so and we will do it together. I would rather that than either of us moving a wardrobe alone
Tell me about the good bits too. An original fireplace, a view from an upstairs window, the room the sun reaches at four o’clock. Those are worth planning around, and I would rather hear it from you than find it on the way out.
I usually start outside if the light is right, then work through the ground floor and upstairs. If the sky is doing nothing useful, I come back to the exterior later in the session rather than settle for a flat grey frame.
My rates and what is included are on the property photography rates page.
Not sure what is worth doing?
Send me a few phone pictures
If you are unsure whether something is worth doing before the shoot, send me a few phone pictures and I will tell you honestly. It normally saves more work than it creates. I photograph properties across Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire.