How To Prepare Your Home To Be Photographed

Even though 2020 is now thankfully gone, many of the changes it brought about look like they’re here to stay. One of them is likely to be an increased emphasis on virtual home viewings. This could do a lot to speed up property sales. It will, however, mean that sellers will really need to understand how best to prepare their home to be photographed. Here are some tips.

Declutter

Decluttering should still be your first step in preparing your house for the sales process. In fact, ideally, you want to be doing more than decluttering. You want to be purging. You want to get as much of your stuff out of your home as possible to maximize the effect of free space. If your budget is up to it, hire a storage facility and move everything you can into it.

Paint walls white

If at all possible, take down wallpaper and (re)paint all walls in plain white. Firstly, this will allow your walls to act as light reflectors and hence create the impression of more space. Secondly, it will deal with any issues related to colour reproduction.

The key point to understand is that the human eye can perceive colour very differently to a camera lens. What’s more, camera lenses vary in their ability to perceive colour and digital screens vary widely in their ability to reproduce colour accurately.

What all this means in practice is that any colour other than a plain white can look totally different in photographs than it does in real life. That difference may not do your home any favours. In fact, it might even be enough to put off a potential buyer. White paint is, therefore, by far your safest option when you’re preparing your house to be photographed.

Get rid of all mirrors

In everyday life, using mirrors can be an affordable and effective way to make a room look bigger. In photography, however, mirrors are a total nightmare. Firstly, there’s the issue of making sure that they don’t reflect anything you don’t want people to see. Secondly, mirrors can make it very difficult for photographers to judge exposure correctly.

If you can’t physically get rid of a mirror, for example, it’s a part of a wardrobe, try covering it up. This will deal with the issue of glare. You’ll then need to check the shots to make sure that none of them shows the covered-up mirror in the background.

Position your furniture for best visual effect

Treat your furniture pieces as props rather than as functional items. Use them to show off a room’s best features and to reduce the impact of any flaws. For example, if you have high ceilings, try to have a tall piece of furniture against your wall so viewers can grasp the fact.

By contrast, if you have low ceilings, choose a smaller unit, but style it to draw the eye up. For example, you could use a low bookcase styled with books standing upright. You could also put some books standing upright on top of books stacked horizontally. This helps to confuse the eye and distract from the lack of ceiling height.