How to Prepare Your Home for Professional Photography and Video
How to Prepare Your Home for Property Photography
To prepare your home for property photography, deep clean and declutter every room, clear all countertops and personal items, wash the windows and open every curtain for natural light, tidy gardens and driveways, and move pets and cars off-site on the day. Allow a full day of preparation before the shoot.
Photography day is one of the most important moments in your entire selling journey. It is the point at which your home’s first impression is created for hundreds of online buyers who will never meet you and may never walk through the door.
Those images do not just represent your home. For most buyers scrolling Daft.ie or MyHome.ie on a phone, they are your home. Here is how to make sure the day counts.
Why Preparation Matters More Than the Camera
A skilled photographer can control light, lens and composition. What no photographer can do is remove the recycling bin from the kitchen, hide the trampoline, or make an over-furnished sitting room feel spacious.
In other words, the quality of the final images is decided before the photographer arrives. Preparation is the seller’s contribution to the marketing campaign, and it is the highest-return hour of work in the whole process.
There is also a practical reason to get it right first time. Reshoots cost days, and a listing that goes live with weak photography rarely recovers, because the highest volume of buyer traffic arrives in the first fortnight.
Start With a Deep Clean and Declutter
Before anything else, a thorough clean and decluttering pass makes the single biggest difference to how your home photographs.
Clear countertops entirely, tidy away personal items, and remove excess furniture that makes rooms feel smaller than they actually are. Cameras exaggerate clutter, so a room that looks merely “lived in” to you will read as crowded on screen.
Pay particular attention to kitchens and bathrooms. These rooms draw the most buyer attention in photographs, so they deserve the most careful preparation.
The Decluttering Rule That Works
Aim for tidy and neutral rather than bare. Buyers need furniture to read scale and understand how a room functions — an empty room photographs as a puzzle, not an opportunity.
For example, a dining table with four chairs and nothing on it says “this room seats four comfortably”. The same table covered in schoolbooks and post says very little at all.
Where Excess Items Should Go
Do not simply move clutter into a wardrobe, the garage or the shed. Photographers often shoot storage, utility spaces and garages, and buyers open doors at viewings anyway.
Where you have a genuine volume problem, temporary storage for a few weeks is a modest cost against the value of a stronger campaign.
Maximise Natural Light
Open all curtains and blinds fully, clean the windows inside and out, and where possible schedule your photography for a bright, dry day.
Natural light consistently produces more appealing, inviting photographs than artificial light alone. Dirty glass, by contrast, softens and greys every interior shot taken near a window.
Replace any blown bulbs before the shoot and make sure lamps in darker corners are working, so the photographer has the option of switching them on. Consistent bulb colour across a room also helps, since mismatched warm and cool bulbs produce awkward colour casts.
Timing the Shoot Around Your Home’s Aspect
Ask your agent to consider which way your home faces. A south-facing rear garden photographs best in the afternoon, while an east-facing front elevation is strongest in the morning.
For homes with strong frontage or attractive lighting, a twilight exterior shot can be worth scheduling separately.
Outdoor Spaces Matter Too
Mow the lawn, edge and weed the beds, and clear patios, decking and driveways of bins, tools, hoses and children’s equipment.
Power-wash the path and driveway if they are stained, and give the front door and porch particular attention. The front elevation is very often the lead image on a listing, so it carries disproportionate weight.
If drone photography forms part of your package, outdoor preparation becomes more important again. Aerial shots capture the full context of the property, which means roof condition, garden layout, boundaries and anything stored out of everyday eyeline all appear in frame.
What to Do the Morning Of
Work through the house in a single pass, room by room, roughly an hour before the photographer is due:
- Put away family photographs, post, paperwork, calendars and fridge magnets
- Clear kitchen counters completely — including kettle, toaster, bin and drying rack where practical
- Remove all toiletries, toothbrushes, bath mats and towels in use; set out fresh, matching towels
- Make every bed with clean, ironed, neutral bedlinen and straighten cushions
- Open every curtain and blind fully, and match blind heights across each room
- Switch on lamps in darker rooms and switch off televisions and screens
- Close toilet lids and tuck bins out of sight in every bathroom
- Hide cables, chargers, remote controls and phone leads
- Move cars off the driveway and away from the frontage
- Remove pet beds, bowls, litter trays and toys, and arrange for pets to be elsewhere
- Empty bins, air the house for ten minutes, and set the heating to a comfortable temperature
- Do a final walkthrough of every room that will be photographed, looking for anything that distracts from the space itself
That last step matters more than it sounds. Fresh eyes catch the thing you have stopped noticing — a bin bag by the back door, a stray towel, a plug-in air freshener glowing in shot.
Room-by-Room Preparation Checklist
Different rooms fail in different ways on camera. Use this table to focus your effort where it changes the image most.
| Room | Remove | Add or Adjust | Common Mistake |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kitchen | Appliances, bin, dish rack, magnets, tea towels | Clean sink, one simple bowl of fruit, polished surfaces | Leaving the kettle and toaster on the worktop |
| Living room | Remotes, cables, laundry, excess cushions | Straightened seating, one throw, lamps on | Furniture pushed flat against every wall |
| Bedrooms | Bedside clutter, chargers, clothes, storage boxes | Neutral bedlinen, symmetrical bedsides, clear floor | Beds made unevenly or with patterned duvets |
| Bathrooms | All toiletries, bath mats, used towels, cleaning products | Fresh matching towels, closed toilet lid, clear windowsill | Shampoo bottles left in the shower |
| Hallway | Coats, shoes, buggies, post, keys | Clear floor, one mirror or console piece | Treating it as storage rather than a first impression |
| Garden and exterior | Bins, hoses, tools, trampolines, garden toys | Mown lawn, swept path, tidy planting, clean front door | Assuming aerial shots will not pick it up |
| Utility, garage, attic | Overflow clutter hidden from other rooms | Enough order to be photographed or opened | Using them as the dumping ground for the tidy-up |
Preparing for Video Tours and Drone Footage
Video is less forgiving than stills. A photographer can shoot around an awkward corner; a walkthrough camera has to pass through it.
That said, the preparation is not entirely different. It is the same standard, applied continuously rather than to individual frames.
| Consideration | Still Photography | Video Tour and Drone |
|---|---|---|
| Scope of tidying | The parts of each room that appear in frame | Every room, hallway, transition and sightline |
| Floors | Visible areas | Fully clear — the camera travels through the space |
| Doors | Can be positioned per shot | Should open fully and stay open throughout |
| Noise | Irrelevant | Matters — turn off extractor fans, washing machines, TVs |
| Movement | Not a factor | Pets and people must be out of the home entirely |
| Exterior | Front and rear elevations | Roof, boundaries, neighbouring context, airspace |
| Weather dependency | Moderate | High — wind restricts drone flying as well as light |
For drone work specifically, check that garden furniture is upright and arranged, the roof and gutters are clear, and side passages are not being used for storage. Aerials show a property the way nobody living in it ever sees it.
Why This Preparation Genuinely Matters
Lorraine Mulligan, Broker at Team Lorraine / RE/MAX and a 27-year veteran Lucan estate agent, has seen firsthand across more than 7,000 home sales how much preparation influences the final quality — and ultimately the performance — of a listing’s photography.
The pattern is consistent. Homes that are properly prepared generate more portal views, more viewing requests, and better-informed buyers arriving at those viewings.
Meanwhile, the sellers who skip preparation rarely see the cost directly. They simply get fewer enquiries and never learn why.
How This Fits Into the Wider Sale Process
Photography should be scheduled after decluttering, minor repairs and staging are complete, not before. Booking the shoot too early is the most common reason sellers end up paying for reshoots or listing with images that undersell the home.
Sequence it as part of your wider preparation: sort paperwork and your BER, complete small repairs, declutter and stage, then photograph, then go live across Daft.ie and MyHome.ie.
Ultimately, the images set the ceiling for how well every later stage performs.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Arrange for pets to be elsewhere during the shoot, both for their comfort and to keep the focus entirely on the property. Remove beds, bowls, litter trays and toys as well, since visible pet items are one of the most common distractions in listing photographs and can put off allergy-conscious buyers.
With your furniture, in almost every case. A well-prepared, decluttered version of your existing setup photographs better than an empty room, because buyers rely on furniture to judge scale and function. The goal is tidy and neutral, not bare. Remove excess pieces rather than clearing the room entirely.
Plan for a full day for the average family home, plus roughly an hour on the morning of the shoot. Larger properties, or homes that have not been decluttered recently, may need a weekend. Starting a week ahead lets you handle storage, repairs and garden work without rushing.
Discuss it with your agent rather than pressing ahead. Overcast light is usually workable for interiors, but heavy rain weakens exterior shots and high wind can ground drone flying altogether. Rescheduling by a few days almost always produces a stronger set of images than proceeding in bad conditions.
A Seller’s Reflection on Photography Day
One recent client shared: “I didn’t realise how much difference the prep work would make until I saw the final photos — the house looked genuinely bigger and brighter than I expected.”
This kind of outcome is a recurring theme across Team Lorraine’s 400 Google five-star reviews.
The Payoff of Getting This Right
Strong photography does not just look good. It directly drives more clicks, more viewing requests and more genuine buyer interest in your Lucan homes for sale listing.
Preparation is also the one part of the marketing campaign entirely within your control. The photographer brings the skill; you bring the home at its best. Get both right and the listing does the work for you.
Let Us Guide Your Preparation
Team Lorraine / RE/MAX Lucan provides sellers with a detailed preparation checklist ahead of every photography appointment, so your home is presented at its absolute best from the day it goes live.
Contact Lorraine Mulligan at Team Lorraine / RE/MAX 📞 +353 1 627 2770 🌐 www.TeamLorraine.ie — book a FREE 2026 Market Strategy Session ✉️ lorraine@teamlorraine.ie 🌐 https://teamlorraine.ie/ 📍 Main St, Celbridge, Co Kildare | Unit 2, Lower Main Street, Lucan, Co Dublin