How to photograph a small bathroom for a real estate listing

To photograph a small bathroom for a real estate listing, stand in the doorway or wedge yourself into the corner beside it, and shoot at an angle toward the vanity and the shower or tub. Turn on every light, put the toilet lid down, and hold the phone level at about chest height with the 0.5x lens. Then check the mirror before you press the shutter, because the most common bathroom mistake is the photographer standing in it.

Bathrooms are the hardest room in most houses to shoot well. They're small, they're full of mirrors and glass, and the lighting is usually a mix of vanity bulbs and a tiny window. Here's what works.

Prep first, because there's nowhere to hide anything

In a big room, clutter can sit in a corner out of the frame. A small bathroom doesn't have corners like that. Everything in it will be in the photo.

• Clear the vanity completely. Toothbrushes, soap pump, hair tools, the cup by the sink. Zillow's seller tips single out toothbrushes and combs, and they're right to.
• Empty the shower and the tub ledge. Every bottle, the razor, the loofah.
• Remove the bath mat, the toilet brush and the trash can. Put the scale in a closet.
• Lid down. Always. A raised seat is the first thing people notice in a bathroom photo.
• Towels: one matching set, folded in thirds and hung straight, or none at all. A crumpled towel looks dirty in a photo even if it's clean.
• Open the shower curtain about two-thirds, or pull it back fully if the tub or tile is worth showing. A closed curtain hides half the room.
• Clean the glass and the mirror. Water spots on a glass shower door show up clearly once the lights are on.

One small plant or a folded hand towel on the vanity is enough decor. Anything more and the room starts looking busy.

Where to stand in a tight space

The doorway is usually the shot

In most small bathrooms the best spot is the doorway, or just inside it with your back against the wall beside the frame. Shoot at an angle so you get the vanity along one side and the tub or shower at the far end. That diagonal is what gives a small room some depth.

Open the door fully and push it flat against the wall. If it still intrudes into the frame, check whether you can shoot from behind it, standing in the gap between the door and the wall. Sometimes that's the widest angle in the room.

Stand in the tub

For a small bath with a tub-shower combo, step into the dry tub and shoot back toward the vanity and the door. It's often the only spot with enough distance. Take one frame from here and one from the doorway, and keep whichever shows more of the room.

Powder rooms

A half bath is usually just a toilet, a sink and a mirror. Shoot the vanity from the doorway, at a slight angle, and don't try to get the whole room. If the powder room is ordinary, you don't need to include it in the listing at all. The shot list guide covers which rooms to skip.

The 0.5x lens: use it, but carefully

You'll need the ultra-wide in almost every small bathroom. At 1x you get a sink and a slice of wall. At 0.5x you get the room. But the ultra-wide has costs, and in a small room they're easy to see.

• It stretches whatever sits near the edge of the frame. A toilet at the edge turns into a wide oval. Keep fixtures toward the middle, or leave them out.
• It exaggerates depth. A 5 by 8 foot bathroom can look noticeably bigger than it is. That feels like a win until a buyer walks in and feels misled. If the shot only works from inside the linen closet, it's not an honest shot.
• It tilts everything the moment the phone tilts. Bathrooms are full of straight lines, like tile grout, the shower frame and the mirror edge, so a lean is obvious.
• It's softer than the main lens, especially in the corners and in dim light. One more reason to turn on every light.

Keep the phone level with the grid and level on, and resist the urge to tilt down to get the floor in. More on this in shooting real estate on an iPhone.

Mirrors: keep yourself out

Every bathroom has at least one mirror, and a mirror facing the doorway will show whoever is standing in the doorway. Some ways around it:

• Shoot the mirror at an angle. From one side, it reflects the opposite wall or the shower, which looks natural.
• Use the timer. Place the phone on the counter or a small tripod, and step out of the room.
• Check the glass shower door and any chrome fixtures too. A shiny faucet can show a tiny person holding a phone.

Don't edit yourself out of a mirror by leaving a strange smear where you were. If the reflection can't be avoided, it's better to reshoot from a different spot.

Light: a mixed bag

A small bathroom usually has vanity lights over the mirror, maybe a ceiling fixture, maybe a light in the shower, and a small frosted window. Turn on all of them. Open the window blind.

That gives you a mix: warm vanity bulbs, a cooler window, and whatever color the shower light happens to be. The photo will come out with a yellow or orange cast on the walls near the vanity and a bluish tone near the window. That's fine. A color cast is easy to correct afterward. A bathroom with one light on and the rest in shadow looks cramped and unclean.

And don't use the flash. In a room full of tile, glass and mirror, a flash bounces straight back and leaves a white spot in the middle of the frame.

Low light in a small room means a slower shutter. Brace your elbows against the door frame, or set the phone on the counter and use the timer. A soft photo of a bathroom reads as dingy.

Editing the bathroom photos

Most phone bathroom shots need the color cast neutralized and the verticals straightened by a degree or two. White tile makes a cast obvious, since buyers expect white to look white. You can fix both by hand in Lightroom or the phone's photo editor.

Real Estate Camera's Enhance handles light, white balance and verticals in one pass, for 1 credit, in 20 to 60 seconds. It doesn't change the tile, the fixtures or the layout. We don't have a bathroom in our set of sample images, so here's a kitchen with the same problem a bathroom usually has: warm bulbs next to daylight.

If the bathroom is in a vacant home, virtual staging includes bathroom as a room type, for 2 credits. Staged photos are flagged "virtually staged" in the app, and export asks you to confirm you'll disclose it. Read virtual staging MLS rules for what your board expects.

Bathroom checklist

1. Vanity cleared. Shower and tub ledge empty. Mat, brush, trash can and scale out.
2. Lid down. Towels folded and matching, or gone.
3. Mirror and glass cleaned.
4. All lights on, fan off, blind open, flash off.
5. Shoot from the doorway or the corner beside it, at an angle. Try from inside the tub too.
6. 0.5x, phone level at chest height, fixtures away from the frame edges.
7. Check the mirror, the shower glass and the faucet for your reflection.

For the primary bath, take a second shot of a freestanding tub or a walk-in shower if it's a feature. For the rest, one good photo each is enough.