Can I take good photos of my place with a phone?

Yes. Airbnb says most cameras can take compelling listing photos, a smartphone’s included, and Booking.com asks for a digital camera or a smartphone with a good camera. The light, a level phone and a tidy room matter more than the device.

What time of day is best for photographing a house?

Airbnb suggests indoors when the rooms get the most daylight, and outdoors in the golden hours: the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset. Google suggests showing a business at different times of day, so an evening photo with the lights on is worth taking too.

Should the photos be horizontal or vertical?

Horizontal for Airbnb and Booking.com, which both ask for landscape photos. Promti’s Forest kit takes either.

How many photos do I need?

Airbnb needs at least five to publish a listing, and says the first five matter most. Booking.com asks for at least ten, and at least four of each room. Google suggests at least three of the outside. Forest asks for exactly six, one for each part of the day it tells.

Can I edit my photos?

Lightly. Brightness, contrast, straightening and cropping are fine; Booking.com turns down heavy filters, over-saturation and excessive HDR, and Google asks that photos represent reality, without heavy filters or AI.

How to photograph your place with a phone: light, framing and what to avoid

People choose where to stay, eat or taste wine by the photos, and a recent phone is enough to take good ones: most cameras can, Airbnb says, including the one on your smartphone. What makes the difference is the light, a level phone, a tidy room and a few settings.

This gathers what Airbnb, Booking.com and Google Business Profile tell owners, and what Apple and Google say about their own phones’ cameras, each with its source at the end. It closes with what Promti’s Forest kit asks for, since its six photos are the site.

Light and time of day

Daylight first. Airbnb suggests photographing indoors when the rooms get the most daylight, and outside in the golden hours — the 60 minutes after sunrise and before sunset — with the flash off, blinds and curtains open, and the lights on only if a room is still too dark. Booking.com asks for curtains open so the views show, and lamps and ambient lights on.

Different hours, different photos. Google’s tips for businesses suggest showing the place at different times of day. A room at breakfast and the terrace after dark are two different reasons to come.

Low light. Phones switch to their night modes on their own when it’s dark — Night mode on iPhone, Night Sight on Pixel — and both ask you to hold still while the photo is taken. Apple suggests a tripod for more detail; on a Pixel, automatic Night Sight doesn’t run with the flash on.

Framing

Landscape, mostly. Airbnb and Booking.com both ask for horizontal photos, because that’s how their pages show them.

Keep the phone level. Turn on the grid and the level — on iPhone in Settings, Camera, Grid and Level; on a Pixel in the camera’s settings — and don’t tilt the phone up or down. Airbnb asks for photos taken straight ahead, and Booking.com turns down skewed or tilted ones.

Height and corners. Booking.com suggests shooting from 100 to 160 cm off the floor and from the room’s corners, for depth, with at least four photos of each room; Airbnb, a mix of wide, mid-range and close-up shots, so guests see both the space and the details.

Wide, not fisheye. The 0.5× ultra-wide lens fits a small room in, and iPhone corrects its distortion by default with Lens Correction. Booking.com still turns down extreme wide-angle and fisheye photos, so step back before you go wider.

Focus and exposure. On iPhone, touch and hold the part that matters until AE/AF Lock appears, then drag up or down to brighten or darken it.

Before you press the shutter

Tidy and clean. Booking.com’s own list: curtains open, cables out of sight, and in bathrooms no toilet paper, tissues or bins in view, with the toilet lid closed. Airbnb puts it simply: clean, declutter, and show guests exactly what they can expect.

What to leave out. Booking.com asks you to avoid people as the main subject, parked cars and road signs, personal documents, screens such as a TV or an open laptop, and watermarks, logos or collages.

Clean the lens. If photos come out blurry, Apple suggests wiping the lenses with a microfibre cloth, and both iPhones and Pixels can warn you when the lens is smudged.

Editing, sizes and formats

Light touches only. Adjusting brightness, contrast and highlights, and straightening or cropping, is what Airbnb suggests. Booking.com turns down over-processed photos, strong filters, over-saturation and excessive HDR, and Google asks for photos in focus, well lit and without significant changes, heavy filters or AI: the photo should represent reality.

Each platform sets its own minimum size, and even their own pages disagree: Airbnb asks for at least 1,200 × 800 pixels in one article and 1,024 × 683 in its help centre; Booking.com for at least 2,048 × 1,080, preferably 4,000 × 3,000, on one page and 1,280 × 900 on another; Google Business Profile for JPG or PNG between 10 KB and 5 MB, 720 × 720 recommended. A recent phone’s photos clear all of them.

iPhones can save photos as HEIF (High Efficiency) or JPEG (Most Compatible), set in Settings, Camera, Formats. If a website or tool won’t take your photos, Most Compatible makes new ones JPEG, as Apple explains.

What the Forest kit asks for

Forest tells a place as one day, in six of your photos, each turned into 3D in your browser. The first is the opening: your place from outside, ideally in morning light, at least 1,600 pixels on its long side. Then four moments of the day, each with its hour, title and a few words. The last goes under the booking card: the evening or night, with the lights on, if you have it.

It takes landscape or portrait photos. Each is resized to 2,048 pixels on its long side and saved again, which also drops the metadata a phone photo can carry, such as where it was taken, and none of them leaves your browser. Each asks for one sentence describing it, for people who can’t see it and for Google.

The demo’s own photos are of a real hotel and never go into your site: the wizard won’t download until all six are yours. If a photo’s 3D can’t be made in your browser, it shows flat, and the wizard suggests a recent Chrome, Edge or Safari. JPEG is the safe format to send.

€500, paid once

Your site, finished — Your words, colours and links — and your pictures, screens or 3D model, as the kit takes them — inside its 3D scene
Seen before you pay — It builds live as you type, on a phone and on a desktop
Every file — Plain HTML, CSS and JS, with the typefaces on your own site
Ready for Google — Title, description and sharing tags, a sitemap, robots.txt and a 404 page
A legal page — Legal notice and privacy, filled in with your details
Guides, step by step — Online in 5 minutes, your domain, your email, visitor stats, Google — plus payments, bookings or your form, depending on the kit
A call with Eric — If anything gets stuck
Hosting — Cloudflare’s free plan, with HTTPS — or any host that serves files
Monthly fee to us — None. The site is yours, with no time limit

See the kits

Questions

Can I take good photos of my place with a phone?: Yes. Airbnb says most cameras can take compelling listing photos, a smartphone’s included, and Booking.com asks for a digital camera or a smartphone with a good camera. The light, a level phone and a tidy room matter more than the device.
What time of day is best for photographing a house?: Airbnb suggests indoors when the rooms get the most daylight, and outdoors in the golden hours: the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset. Google suggests showing a business at different times of day, so an evening photo with the lights on is worth taking too.
Should the photos be horizontal or vertical?: Horizontal for Airbnb and Booking.com, which both ask for landscape photos. Promti’s Forest kit takes either.
How many photos do I need?: Airbnb needs at least five to publish a listing, and says the first five matter most. Booking.com asks for at least ten, and at least four of each room. Google suggests at least three of the outside. Forest asks for exactly six, one for each part of the day it tells.
Can I edit my photos?: Lightly. Brightness, contrast, straightening and cropping are fine; Booking.com turns down heavy filters, over-saturation and excessive HDR, and Google asks that photos represent reality, without heavy filters or AI.