How to take real estate photos with an iPhone

To take professional-looking real estate photos with an iPhone, turn on Grid and Level. Shoot in landscape with the 0.5x lens from a corner, holding the phone at about light-switch height. Keep it level so the walls stay straight. Turn on every light and open every blind, then tap a wall to set the exposure rather than tapping the window. Those habits account for much of the difference between listing photos taken on a phone and a professional photographer's work.

Below are the exact settings, where to stand and the mistakes buyers notice before they see the price.

Are iPhone photos good enough for a property listing?

For a flat, starter home, rental property or FSBO listing in good light, yes, if you follow the habits on this page. Sellers do notice. A Reddit thread titled "Estate agent turned up with an iPhone to photograph a home" drew more than 170 comments. What those sellers are reacting to is usually the result, not the phone: walls that appear to lean, dark rooms and blown-out windows. For a luxury home, or a listing that needs drone, twilight or video photography, hire a photographer. DIY or professional explains where the line falls.

Set up the camera before you arrive at the property

Set up your iPhone once, then leave the settings alone.

• In iPhone Settings, open Camera and turn on Grid and Level. Apple's guide explains how to access both using the same switch. The level draws a line across the centre of the frame to show whether the phone is tilted to the left or right. Align the phone with it for every shot.
• Keep Lens Correction on. You'll find it in Settings, then Camera. It's on by default, and Apple says it adjusts Ultra Wide photos for more natural results. Turn it back on if someone has switched it off. You'll use the 0.5x lens for most rooms.
• Leave HDR on automatic. By default, the iPhone blends several exposures when a scene contains both bright and dark areas. A living room with a picture window is a typical example. Leave the setting as it is.
• Before the first shot, clean the lens. A thumbprint on the 0.5x lens creates a soft haze over every window. Wipe the lens on your shirt, then do it again after the phone has been in your pocket.

Newer Pro models can shoot 48 MP files if you turn on Resolution Control under Settings, Camera, Formats. The files are sharper but much larger, and an MLS will compress them regardless. I leave it off when photographing properties for sale.

Where to stand and how to hold the phone

Shoot from a corner, not the doorway

Walk into the room and stand with your back to the corner opposite the most interesting wall. From there, the 0.5x lens captures two full walls, giving the room depth. From a doorway, you will usually capture just one flat wall and the side of a doorframe.

Take one shot from that corner. Take another from the opposite corner if the room is large enough to justify it. A small bedroom only needs one shot.

Hold it at light-switch height

Eye level is too high. At 5 feet, you either point the iPhone down at the floor, making the room look smaller, or tilt it up to fit in the furniture, making the walls lean. Lower it to light-switch height, roughly chest height for most people. Bend your knees. It feels wrong for the first few rooms, then it starts to feel natural.

In a kitchen, hold the iPhone a little higher so that the worktops look like surfaces rather than edges. In a bathroom, you may have to stand in the bath or doorway. Make the most of the space available, but keep the phone level.

Keep the phone level, always

Keeping the iPhone level is more important than anything else on this page. Tilt it down and the walls lean inwards at the bottom. Tilt it up and they fall outwards at the top. Buyers may not be able to name the problem, but they feel it. Keep the phone level whichever way you hold it: use the level line to check left to right, then align a doorframe or wall corner with a vertical grid line for front to back. If those two lines run parallel, the camera is square to the room.

If the room won't fit into the 0.5x frame, step back or try a different corner. Don't tilt. For more on this, see how to fix leaning vertical lines.

Landscape only

Turn the iPhone sideways for every shot. Listing sites use a landscape frame, so a portrait photo ends up with grey bars down each side.

What the 0.5x lens does well and where it falls short

The ultra-wide lens is what makes a phone suitable for this job in the first place. It is also where most listings go wrong when shot on a phone.

At 0.5x, an 11 by 12 foot bedroom fits into a single frame, with the bed, window and wardrobe door all in view. No other lens on the phone can manage that.

Where it causes problems:

• It stretches anything near the edge of the frame. A chair looks wider than it really is, and a round table appears oval. Keep important furniture towards the centre of the frame.
• It exaggerates depth, making a small room look noticeably bigger. That seems like a good thing until a buyer walks in and feels misled. Don't wedge yourself into a wardrobe just to fit an extra foot of floor space into the shot.
• It produces softer images than the main lens, particularly in the corners and in low light. Give it as much light as possible.

Switch to 1x for details such as a cooker hood or a tiled splashback. The main lens is sharper and produces far less distortion.

Light: the part people skip

Turn on every light, open every blind

Turn on every lamp and overhead light. Under-cabinet strips too. Open the blinds fully and, if you can, tilt the slats out of the frame. A dark corner makes a room look small and gloomy in a property photo.

Mixing warm yellow bulbs with cool daylight can create clashing colours on the walls. I still keep the lights on. A slight warm cast is easy to correct later; a room lit by one window is harder to rescue. If your photos are too dark, here's how to fix dark property photos.

Set exposure on the wall, then lock it

Point the iPhone at a room with a bright window and it will expose for the window, leaving the interior dark. Tap a wall or the floor instead, then drag up or down beside the focus square to brighten or darken the photo. To keep that setting, touch and hold until AE/AF Lock appears. This locks focus and exposure for the next photos. Tap anywhere to release it.

You'll lose some detail in the window in a single iPhone shot. That's normal. The room should look true to life.

Time of day

For the exterior of the property, shoot when the sun is hitting the façade: in the morning for east-facing homes, and in the afternoon for west-facing ones. When the sun is behind the house, the front becomes a dark shape against a bright sky.

Indoors, a bright overcast sky gives you the best light. On a clear day, avoid the time when sunlight throws sharp rectangles across the floor. Those bright patches blow out and draw the eye away from the room.

Hold still

In dim rooms, the shutter stays open for longer. Brace your elbows against your body or lean against a door frame. Breathe out before you tap. A small phone tripod with a Bluetooth remote solves the camera-shake problem and makes it much easier to keep the phone at the same height in every room.

Common mistakes that give away that you've used a phone

• The biggest giveaway is leaning walls. Keep the phone level.
• Avoid shooting from eye height. Holding the phone at 5 feet shows too much ceiling or floor and not enough of the room.
• Check for a toilet seat left up or crumpled towels. Put the seat down. Fold the towels once and hang them straight.
• Check the frame for your reflection. Look in mirrors, microwave ovens, oven doors and glass shower screens. Shoot mirrors at an angle so you don't appear in them.
• Switch off ceiling fans. Spinning blades create blur.
• Don't leave worktops covered. Remove soap and sponges, fridge magnets, the toaster and the knife block. Clear away everything that isn't decorative.
• Avoid pinch zoom. Switching between the lens settings digitally crops the image and loses detail. Tap 0.5x or 1x and move your feet instead.
• Avoid vertical photos. They're still common in agent-shot listings on the MLS (in your market: Rightmove or Zoopla). Keep the phone horizontal.

Use our property photography checklist to decide which rooms to photograph and in what order.

Where editing comes in

Even a carefully taken iPhone photo usually needs a little editing. Light bulbs leave a yellow cast. A window can be blown out, or a wall can lean by a degree or two. You can fix all of that by hand in Lightroom or the iPhone Photos app. Once you know what you're doing, it takes a few minutes per photo, which adds up across a 30-photo listing.

Real Estate Camera does that work for you. Shoot in the app or upload photos you've already taken. Enhance corrects the light and colour, then straightens verticals, in 20 to 60 seconds for 1 credit. It won't declutter or move walls. Nor does it turn a grey sky blue, so the photo still shows the house a buyer will see.

For an empty room, virtual staging adds furniture in one of eight styles and labels the file "virtually staged". Check your board's rules first in our guide to virtual staging and MLS rules. If the seller's furniture is the problem, removing furniture from photos explains the options.

A quick routine for each room

1. Lights on, blinds open, fan off, clutter cleared.
2. Stand in the corner opposite the best wall.
3. Hold the phone horizontally at light-switch height. Select 0.5x.
4. Line up the level.
5. Tap a wall and adjust the exposure until the room looks right. Hold for AE/AF Lock.
6. Check the edges of the frame for stretched furniture. Look out for your own reflection too.
7. Shoot two frames. Move on.

The first house will feel slow. By the third listing, you stop thinking about the steps and just walk through the rooms.

For the app built around this routine, see the real estate photography app.

Shoot your next listing on your iPhone and edit it before you leave. Start free: 1 credit.