HDR Edit want your property’s virtually staged photos to look amazing! An important first step to accomplish this goal is to have high-quality photos taken of your listing. You or your real estate photographer can follow the checklist below to ensure that the photos of your listing will be perfectly suited for virtual staging.
1. Clean (the Room)
- Remove all items from the room that you don’t want to be included in your virtually staged photo
- Clean all surfaces (floors, windows, walls)
- Ensure all lightbulbs work and are of the same color temperature
- Turn off all fans
- For bathrooms, put the toilet lid down
2. Camera
- Use a DSLR camera with a professional quality wide angle lens (18-22mm)
- Do not use an extra-wide angle lens like a fisheye lens
- Save photos in a high-quality JPG format (at least 2,000 pixels wide)
- Do not use your camera’s zoom functionality
- Mount your camera on a tripod to stabilize the camera and to make sure photos are taken from a consistent height
- Use your camera’s HDR (high dynamic range) functionality, which will reduce over- and under-exposed photos
- Take photos from waist level – about 1/2 of the ceiling’s height
- Shoot in horizontal landscape mode (do not tilt the camera up or down – you can use your camera’s leveler to be sure you’re shooting straight on)
3. Compose
- Taking photos in the morning if the room faces east ; if the room faces west, take photos in the evening
- If the room has a pleasant view and/or needs light, open and raise the blinds or pull back the curtains as you deem fit (this will vary depending on the room’s view and the amount of light it is receiving)
- You should take photos from opposite corners, square with the room’s focal point or from the room’s entry
- Do not stand where furniture goes
- Avoid being seen in windows, mirrors, screens or any other reflective surface
- Even if there is a fireplace, do not cut the fireplace off
- With kitchens, take photos slightly above the counter
- For bathrooms, take photos slightly above the counter and below the mirror
- For bedrooms, photograph the wall where the bed’s headboard will go
