How to photograph a summer house to promote it online (7 tips)

Do you have a house by the sea or in the mountains to rent out in the summer and want to promote it on online channels and social media, even though you are not a communications expert or a real estate agent?
Here are some tips on how to take photos that will showcase the property you want to offer to tourists.

These tips also apply to those who don't strictly have a holiday home but want, for example, to make their city home available for the summer while they are elsewhere, as happens with house swapping and house sitting (a network of travellers who offer to look after your home while you are travelling yourself).

These tips suit every type of camera, from a super-professional one with three lenses to a featherweight digital compact.
Let's begin:

1 - Shoot in landscape orientation

Think about the audience you are addressing: even if the subject of your shot is a balcony door or a room with a mezzanine, remember that people looking for a rental home online often do so from tablets and smartphones, where portrait photos don't display well. It is better to always try to compose a good shot in landscape orientation, following the next tips.

2 - Colours suited to the purpose

If you are renting out a house for the summer period, regardless of its distance from the sea or from a river or lake, alternate white with light blue or light green in the furnishings. The combination of these colours conveys freshness, and so responds to a primary desire of those looking for a holiday home.

3 - Photos from above

Rent, borrow or buy a telescopic pole. Very useful, in fact by now almost indispensable, for anyone who wants to take interior photos for whatever reason, it lets you shoot from different heights and create emotionally strong compositions by exploiting verticality (which gives a sense of dynamism) and making the most of every space, even the smallest ones.

Moreover, a shot taken from a height of two metres also helps to better showcase spaces that extend vertically, even when framing horizontally as recommended in point 1.

You might also be interested in the article 3 tips for making the best use of a telescopic pole for different types of shots

4 - Logical order

Please, don't publish at random! Post images as if you were showing the rooms of the house in the order in which you would visit them on foot. For the main rooms, also take photos from at least two points of view: from the door and from exactly the opposite side, so that the space in front of the entrance door can be seen.

5 - Vertical lines

Make the virtual visitor feel at ease, avoid making them dizzy and convey a sense of order. One way to do this is to pay close attention to the vertical lines and follow them: for example, make sure the right and left sides of the photo are parallel to the sides of doors, windows and walls.
Here too the telescopic pole helps, thanks to the stability of the foot it rests on, with which you will hold it steady, and the possibility of mounting the video camera in a perfectly symmetrical way.

6 - Tidiness in the house

Order obviously comes not only from lines but also from the furnishings and from how you arrange the things in the house. Make sure your bag, coat, sweaters or shoes do not appear in the frame, because besides conveying a sense of disorder, it could also give the idea that this is not my home but someone else's, which in fact is the case, but it is not what a potential guest and customer likes to perceive.

7 - Showcase the outdoors

If the house is perched on a cliff above the sea or overlooks a white beach, highlighting the outdoors is not very difficult! Just choose the early hours of the morning, because the light is clear and the air is more rarefied (and the streets/beaches emptier, and this promise of tranquillity appeals to potential customers).
Include among the photos one that frames the view of the most beautiful outdoor area, placing next to the window/balcony an armchair with cushions and some magazines and books beside it: it will be like a promise of lovely moments of relaxation for those who arrive. (After the shot, of course, leave the armchair there, or at least put it back there for the guests' arrival).
If the house is in an area that is not particularly beautiful, you need to be more imaginative and resourceful. Tidy up any flowerbeds, embellish with flowers and plants, choose moments when no cars are parked, take photos of interesting details, such as a particular gate, a cat on a rug (cats always work), a wall of ivy.

But be careful! Enhance interesting details but do not include photos of things that do not actually exist in this house or in front of it. Tell the truth through your photos. As already said, every photo is a promise of relaxation, of beauty, of lovely moments to spend, and promises must be kept.