How to photograph your home to sell it, with a phone

Buyers decide whether to open your listing from a single thumbnail, and whether to book a viewing from the handful of photos they scroll before moving on. That is the whole job your photography has to do. The good news for a private seller is that the gap between a phone and a professional camera has mostly closed for interiors, and the things that still separate a good property photo from a bad one are technique and coverage, not equipment.

Last reviewed: 2026-08-12. The photo counts below are our own editorial recommendation rather than a measured industry figure, and every app behaviour described here was re-checked against the live capture flow before this update.

How many photos does a listing need?

Between 15 and 25 for a normal flat. That range is our own editorial recommendation, not a portal rule, and it comes from the same place the rest of this guide does: a set below about ten leaves obvious gaps and invites the question of what was left out, while much above thirty is usually near-duplicates that dilute the strong images, at a point where the buyer has stopped scrolling anyway.

Coverage matters more than the count. The rule that actually protects you: photograph every room you would show at a viewing. Sellers routinely skip the bathroom, the hall and the utility room because they seem unphotogenic, and every one of those omissions makes a buyer suspicious. A plain, honest photo of a small bathroom costs you nothing. A missing bathroom costs you viewings.

A workable shot list for a two-bedroom flat: living room from two opposite corners, kitchen wide plus one detail, each bedroom from the doorway corner, bathroom, hall, balcony or terrace, the view from the main window, the building entrance, and the street. That lands naturally around twenty.

What actually makes a property photo look professional?

Four things, in order of how much they matter.

Keep the phone level. Point it slightly up or down and the vertical lines of the walls converge, so the room looks like it is falling over. Nearly every phone camera has a grid and a level in the camera settings. Turn both on. This one habit does more for your photos than any other change.

Shoot from the corner, at chest height. Standing in the doorway gives you a flat, boxy view. Backing into a corner shows two walls and the depth between them, which is how a room reads as spacious. Chest height, about 1.4 m, matches how a person perceives the room. Phone at eye level makes floors disappear, and at hip height it makes ceilings look low.

Get the light right. A bright but overcast day is ideal, because direct sun blows out the windows and throws hard shadows. Turn on every lamp, open every curtain, and shoot with the window behind or beside you rather than in front. If a room is genuinely dark, that is worth knowing before you list, because buyers will see it at the viewing regardless.

Tidy far past what feels necessary. Clear every surface: worktops, windowsills, the shelf by the door, the bathroom sink. Remove bins, drying racks, cables, fridge magnets and family photos. The buyer needs to imagine their life in the room, which is hard when yours is still visibly in it. This is free and it changes listings more than any other single step.

Do you need a professional photographer?

For most flats, no longer. A professional brings a wide-angle lens, proper lighting and an eye for composition, and for a large or architecturally unusual home that is still worth paying for. For a standard two- or three-room flat, a modern phone plus the technique above gets you most of the way, and the money is better spent on cleaning and decluttering.

Where a private seller genuinely used to lose out was everything around the photos: knowing which shots were missing, writing a description that reads like an agent wrote it, and pricing the home against real comparable data. Those were the reasons to hire someone. They are now the parts a phone can do.

What about floor plans, video and 360° tours?

Three things are worth adding, and they are not equally valuable.

The floor plan is the most important, and the 3D view of it more so. Photographs are structurally unable to answer the two questions buyers care most about: how big is it, and how is it laid out. A photo of a bedroom tells you nothing about whether you walk through it to reach the bathroom, and no number of extra angles will fix that, because the information is not in any single frame. A plan carries it in one image. In the Seeki.eu app you walk the room and tap each corner, and it measures the walls and draws the floor plan from that, with the doors and windows marked, then generates a 3D view of the layout. It takes a couple of minutes a room, and you can upload a plan you already have instead. Adding one is the biggest single upgrade available to a private listing, and it is the part most private sellers skip entirely, because until recently it meant paying someone to come and measure.

A 360° tour is the closest thing to a viewing without one, and it is disproportionately valuable when your buyer might be in another country and cannot easily come and look. You sweep the phone around the room in a single pass, with no tripod and no extra hardware, and the tour is assembled in the background while you carry on filling in the rest of the listing.

A walkthrough video answers how the rooms connect. No still photograph can show the flow of a flat, because the information lives in the transitions between frames rather than in any one of them, and a slow thirty-second walk from the front door through the main rooms carries it.

None of the three replaces photos. The thumbnail is still what decides whether anyone opens the listing at all.

What happens after the photos?

The photos are the input to everything else. In the Seeki.eu app, AI reads them and drafts the listing description along with the structured fields, the size, the room count and the layout, and it detects the amenities from what it can see, the balcony, the lift, the cellar, the heating and the energy rating, so you are correcting a draft rather than facing an empty form. You get a guide price from local median price-per-m² data, adjusted for size and condition, which is a starting estimate rather than a formal valuation but is built from the same comparables an agent would quote. Every listing then carries two separate signals: a listing grade for how complete and consistent the listing itself is, and a location score from 0 to 100 built from transit, amenities, green space and noise data. Check the grade before you publish, because it is the cheapest possible feedback.

Getting the asking figure right matters more than any photograph, and it is the mistake private sellers make most often. We work through it properly in how to price your home to sell, using real data, and the price-per-m² pages give you the local median to price against.

Every one of those creation tools is free. Publishing on Seeki.eu costs a flat €9 at the current launch price, against a regular €29, with no commission on the sale. When you want the national portals as well, the app packs the finished listing into a paste-ready bundle using each portal's own field labels and a sized photo set, so you build the listing once. You still create the ad and pay on each portal yourself, but you never retype anything. Which portals take a private seller, and what each charges, is mapped in where private sellers can list property in Europe.

Frequently asked questions

How many photos should a property listing have?

Between 15 and 25 for a typical apartment, as our own editorial recommendation rather than a portal rule. Fewer than ten leaves visible gaps in the coverage, and more than about thirty adds near-duplicates that bury your strongest images. Coverage matters more than volume: photograph every room you would show at a viewing, including the bathroom, hallway and storage, because a missing room reads as a hidden problem.

Can you take property photos with a phone?

Yes. For a standard flat a modern phone is enough, and technique now matters far more than the camera. Keep the phone level so walls stay vertical, shoot from a corner at roughly chest height to show depth, and use bright indirect daylight with all the lamps on. A professional is still worth it for large, unusual or high-value homes.

What is the best time of day to photograph a house?

Mid-morning or early afternoon on a bright but overcast day. Even cloud acts as a giant softbox, filling the room without blowing out the windows or casting hard shadows. Direct midday sun is the hardest light to work with indoors. For exteriors, aim for when the sun falls on the front of the building rather than behind it.

Do I need a wide-angle lens for property photos?

No, and the ultra-wide setting is easy to overuse. Most phone main cameras are already wide enough for a normal room. Ultra-wide distorts edges and makes rooms look larger than they are, and that gap between the photo and the room is obvious the moment a buyer walks in. Shooting from a corner at chest height gives you the sense of space without the distortion.

Should a property listing include a video or a virtual tour?

Both help, and a floor plan helps more than either. A plan answers the size and layout questions that photographs structurally cannot. In the Seeki.eu app you walk the room and tap each corner, and it measures the walls and draws the plan, then generates a 3D view of the layout. A 360° tour is next, mattering most when your buyer is in another country and cannot visit easily. A walkthrough video shows how rooms connect. The app records all three from a phone, with no extra hardware.

Does the Seeki.eu app cost anything?

The app is free and every creation tool inside it is free, including guided photo capture, photo enhancement, virtual staging, the floor plan and its 3D view, the 360° tour, the AI-written description and the guide price. You pay only when you publish: a flat €9 at the current launch price, against a regular €29, with no commission taken on the sale.

Before you shoot

Clean and declutter first, then wait for the right weather rather than shooting in the rain because you had the afternoon free. Turn on the camera grid, walk the flat once to plan your corners, and shoot every room. Then let the draft come from the photos rather than from a blank page, check the listing grade, and price against real local data before you commit to a figure.