Photography can make a well-prepared home look excellent. It cannot make an unprepared home look prepared. The two hours a seller spends before the shoot has more effect on the final gallery than anything that happens in editing afterwards.
Here is the list we send ahead of every session. Pass it to your seller a week out, not the night before.
Everywhere in the house
Replace every dead bulb, and make sure bulbs in the same room are the same colour temperature — one warm bulb beside three cool ones turns a whole wall orange in a photograph. Open every blind and curtain fully. Turn on every light in the house, including lamps and under-cabinet lighting.
Remove anything personal enough that a buyer would notice it: family photographs, certificates, medication, mail on the counter. Buyers should be picturing themselves in the home, and personal items keep reminding them it belongs to someone else.
Take the cars off the driveway and off the street in front of the house, move rubbish and recycling bins out of sight, and coil up hoses and extension leads.
Kitchen
Clear the countertops completely, then put back at most two or three deliberate items — a bowl of fruit, a plant, a coffee machine if it is a good one. Everything else goes in a cupboard. Empty counters photograph as space; cluttered counters photograph as lack of storage.
Take everything off the refrigerator door. Magnets, photos, school timetables and shopping lists all read as visual noise in a wide frame. Hide the dish rack, the washing-up liquid and the bin.
Bathrooms
Clear every surface. Toothbrushes, razors, soap bottles and hairbrushes all go away. Hang fresh matching towels — folded neatly, or replaced with new ones if the current set is tired. Close every toilet lid.
Remove bath mats unless they are new and pristine. Shower curtains should be open and clean, and any shampoo bottles in the shower need to come out before we start.
Bedrooms and living spaces
Make every bed properly, with matching bedding and no visible wear. Clear nightstands to a lamp and perhaps one small object. Clear the floor entirely — shoes, laundry baskets, charging cables and toys all need to go.
In living spaces, remove excess furniture. Rooms photograph better with less in them, and a sofa plus two chairs reads far more spacious than a sofa plus two chairs plus a recliner plus a side table. Straighten cushions, fold throws and hide the remote controls and cables.
Outside
Mow the lawn and edge the beds two days before the shoot, not the same morning — fresh cuttings show. Sweep the driveway, path and porch. Pressure wash if the concrete has gone green.
Clean the pool and remove the cleaning equipment, floats and toys. Tidy the patio furniture and put the cushions out. Take down seasonal decorations. If we are shooting aerial or twilight, clear the roof and gutters of debris, because both will be visible.
The morning of the shoot
Do a final walk through every room at eye level and look for anything you have stopped noticing. Turn all the lights on about fifteen minutes before we arrive. Put pets in the garage or take them out for the duration — nervous animals slow the whole session down.
One last thing worth saying to sellers plainly: every hour spent on this list is repaid many times over. The gallery is what the market sees first, and it is the only part of the marketing you can still perfect on the day.