Photos that sell your listing
Guests scroll past most listings in under two seconds. The photos decide whether yours stops the scroll.
Light first, camera second
Shoot in the hour after sunrise or a few hours before sunset when the light is soft — never with the sun directly behind a window, which blows out the shot. Turn on every lamp in the room in addition to daylight; mixed light reads as warm and inviting on camera.
Shoot from the corner, not the doorway
Standing in a corner at roughly chest height, camera held level (not tilted up or down), captures more of the room and keeps vertical lines straight. Most phone cameras have a grid option in settings — turn it on and line the walls up with it.
Stage lightly, not heavily
Open curtains, put the toilet seat down, straighten cushions, hide cables, remove bins from shot. Add one small warm detail per room — a bowl of fruit, a folded towel on the bed — but stop there; over-styled photos read as staged and can undersell the space guests actually get.
The shot list that covers most properties
- Exterior / entrance (sets expectations immediately)
- Living area from two angles
- Each bedroom, shot from the doorway and from a corner
- Bathroom, straight on
- Kitchen, wide and one close-up of a nice detail (coffee machine, tap)
- Any outside space — balcony, garden, view
- One lifestyle shot: table set, lamp on at dusk
Order matters as much as quality
Lead with your strongest, brightest, widest shot — it's what shows in search results before anyone clicks in. Put the worst-lit or smallest room near the end, not the start.
Editing: straighten and brighten, nothing else
A free phone editor can fix tilted verticals and lift shadows. Avoid heavy filters or saturation boosts — guests notice when the photo doesn't match the room, and it shows up in reviews as "not as pictured."