How many photographs does a listing actually need?

Agents ask this constantly and get contradictory answers, usually some version of "as many as possible" from one side and "keep it short" from the other.

Both miss the point, which is that photographs are not a quantity problem. A buyer is not counting them. They are building a picture of the property in their head, and every photograph either sharpens that picture or muddies it.

The test for whether a photograph earns its place

Does it answer a question a buyer would otherwise have?

That is the whole test. A second angle of the same lounge from two paces left answers nothing, so it costs you rather than adding. A photograph of the third bedroom answers "is there a third bedroom and what is it like", so it earns its place even if the room is dull.

Applied honestly this usually lands somewhere between ten and eighteen photographs for a normal family home. Not because that is a rule, but because that is roughly how many genuine questions a buyer has.

What must be there

• Every room a buyer is paying for, including the ordinary ones
• The kitchen, from a corner, showing the working triangle
• Each bathroom, even if small
• The outdoor space, showing how it relates to the house
• The front of the property
• Parking or garage, if it exists

The one agents most often skip is the ordinary bedroom or the plain second bathroom. Skipping it does not hide it. It invites the buyer to assume something is wrong with it, and that assumption is always worse than the room.

What to leave out

Repeat angles of the same space. Close-ups of taps, handles and light fittings, unless something genuinely unusual is being sold with the house. Photographs taken at night through a window. Anything showing the seller's family photographs, post, or anything else personal.

Also leave out the room you photographed badly. A dark, tilted photograph of a good room does more harm than no photograph, because the buyer judges the room by the picture rather than the picture by the room.

The order matters more than the count

Portals show the first three prominently and most buyers never reach the end. So:

1. The strongest exterior or the best living space
2. The main living area
3. The kitchen
4. Then the rooms in the order someone would walk through the house

Walking order is worth following even when it means putting a plain room fourth. It lets the buyer build a floor plan in their head, and a buyer who can picture the layout is far closer to booking a viewing than one who has seen ten disconnected rooms.

If some rooms are empty

Empty rooms still get photographed. All of them. An unphotographed room is a question mark, and an empty photographed room is at worst a neutral. If you are staging, staging one hero image per room and leaving the rest as shot is usually enough; the buyer needs the scale reference once per space, not four times.

Our shooting guide covers how to take each of these, and the preparation checklist covers what to do in an empty property before the camera comes out.

The short version

• Twelve to eighteen for a family home, and count questions rather than rooms
• Every room, including the boring ones
• No repeat angles, no tap close-ups, nothing personal in shot
• First three carry the listing
• Then walking order, so the buyer can build the layout