How Many Images Does a Property Brochure Need?

The question comes up in almost every conversation about photo packages: are ten images enough? Are thirty too many? The answer is not a fixed number, but it is not arbitrary either. It follows from a simple rule: every image has to answer a question a prospective buyer actually asks.

Apply that rule and a typical flat comes to 12 to 18 images, a detached house to 18 to 25, and a commercial property to an entirely different logic. More important than the number, though, is which images they are and in what order they appear.

Why too few images cost you enquiries

A brochure with five images creates a gap the viewer fills themselves — and they fill it unfavourably. What is not shown counts as not worth showing. If the bathroom is missing, the buyer assumes it is dated. If the kitchen is missing, they assume there is not one. If there is no exterior shot at all, they assume the house looks unattractive.

These conclusions are often wrong, but they are understandable. A seller with something to show, shows it.

The second effect is practical: someone who cannot judge the property either asks or scrolls on. Questions cost your time; scrolling on costs the enquiry. Both can be avoided with images that would be taken at the same appointment anyway.

Why too many images also do harm

The other direction is discussed less often. A brochure with fifty images has three problems.

The average drops. Buyers judge a gallery not by its best image but by the overall impression. Five very good images plus fifteen mediocre ones look worse than the five very good ones alone.

The message is diluted. Four shots of the same living room from four similar angles add no insight. They create the impression that there is nothing else to show.

Attention runs out. Very few viewers work through a gallery in full. What sits at the back is not seen. If your best argument is image 34, it effectively does not exist.

There is one sensible exception: high-value properties and commercial premises, where the buyer conducts an intensive review anyway. Here more extensive documentation is useful — but better as a second layer in the PDF brochure than in the portal gallery.

The mandatory images

Regardless of property type, some shots always have to be there, because their absence is read as a signal:

• Exterior view from the access side


• Living room or main living space


• Kitchen, even if it is not included in the sale


• Every bathroom and WC, individually


• Every bedroom and children's room, individually


• Balcony, terrace or garden, where present


• Floor plan


• The view from at least one window

The view is the item most often missing and the one that generates the most follow-up questions. It answers the question of noise, overlooking and orientation in a single image. And if the view is not attractive, it still belongs in — it will come up at the viewing anyway.

Additionally, depending on the property: hallway and entrance area, storeroom, cellar, utility room, garage or parking space, the stairwell for flats, the house seen from the garden side, the heating system in properties with new plant.

The order matters more than the number

Portals show the first image as the header in the results list. It decides whether the listing is opened at all. The first three or four images in the gallery decide whether people scroll on. Everything after that only reaches the share of viewers already reviewing seriously.

An order that works:

1. The strongest image. Usually the exterior for houses, the main living space for flats. Not the hallway, not the stairwell, not the doorbell panel.
2. The main living space, if it was not image 1.
3. Kitchen.
4. Outdoor space — terrace, balcony, garden.
5. Bathroom.
6. Bedrooms and further rooms in a comprehensible sequence.
7. Ancillary rooms, cellar, garage.
8. Floor plan.
9. Surroundings and location, where available.

There are two views on the floor plan. Some put it near the front, because a share of buyers check the layout first. We recommend the middle position: the floor plan is a review tool for someone already interested, and as a header image in the results list it is rarely strong enough.

The most important principle on sequence: images should follow the route through the property rather than jumping between storeys and orientations. A viewer led into the same room twice loses their bearings, and with them the feeling of having understood the flat.

What a single image has to achieve

The number alone says nothing if the images are redundant. Test each one with a question: what information does this image provide that no other one does?

Typical redundancies:

• Three angles of the same living room with no difference in what they tell you


• Detail shots of taps, door handles or light switches in a property outside the luxury segment


• Several shots of the well-kept lawn


• The stairwell from three viewpoints

Conversely, some images do disproportionately much:

• A shot showing two rooms in relation to one another — the view from the living room into the kitchen


• The image with elements that give scale: an open door, a window, a piece of furniture


• The shot that pre-empts a question: the parking space, the meter cabinet, the new boiler

Property-specific guidance

Flat, two to three rooms: 12 to 16 images. All rooms, bathroom, kitchen, balcony, view, floor plan, exterior of the building, stairwell.

Detached house: 18 to 25 images. Two exterior views from different directions, garden, all living rooms, bathrooms, ancillary rooms, floor plans per storey, an aerial shot where appropriate.

Commercial space: the logic changes. Here what counts is area, shape, delivery access, ceiling height, transport links and fit-out standard. Five good images plus a reliable area plan beat twenty interior shots of an empty hall. For office stock, office staging is a further way of presenting empty space in usable form.

Refurbishment property: here more images are better, not fewer — honest ones. The condition has to be fully documented, otherwise every viewing starts with a disappointment. A virtual renovation shows the potential as a supplement, but does not replace the record of the existing state.

New build before completion: visualisations take the role of photographs. The rules on quantity apply analogously, and labelling them as illustrations is mandatory.

Common mistakes

The header image is not the best image. Often what sits there is whatever the camera recorded first. Check the order after import, not before.

Mixing images of differing quality. Twelve professional shots plus three phone pictures of the cellar produce a brochure with three phone pictures. If ancillary rooms were not photographed professionally, leaving them out is often better.

Different image formats. Alternating landscape and portrait destroys the rhythm of the gallery and crops differently on portals. Stay with one aspect ratio.

The gallery contains duplicates with and without staging. If you want to show virtually furnished and empty versions — and that is sensible — do it as a clearly recognisable pair directly one after the other, not spread across the gallery. What the labelling has to look like is covered in our article on labelling virtual furnishing.

Images added later are appended at the end. If you supply further images two weeks after publication, sort them into the right place. Otherwise the good garden shot sits at position 22.

What the number of images does not compensate for

For completeness: more images do not replace a better shot. Twenty mediocre images of a property generate fewer enquiries than ten good ones. If the budget is limited, the right decision is to have fewer rooms photographed professionally, not all rooms photographed badly.

And images do not replace data. Year of construction, energy rating, service charges, plot size, availability date — these are filter criteria on which a listing fails before the gallery is ever opened. What belongs in the text is covered in our article on optimising the brochure.

Conclusion

The right number of images is the one at which every room appears once, every obvious question is answered once, and no image is there without a contribution of its own. For most residential properties that lies between 12 and 25.

More important than that range is the order. The first four images decide the enquiry; everything after that prepares the viewing.

How to prepare the property so that each of these images is usable is set out in our photo shoot checklist.