Photo day is the highest-leverage two hours of your entire sale. Almost every buyer sees your home on a screen before they see it in person, and those images decide whether your listing makes their shortlist or gets scrolled past. You get one shot at it — reshoots happen, but the first set is what goes out to the market and gets shared to everyone watching.
The good news is that the prep is finite and mostly free. Here's how to be genuinely ready.
The one rule that matters most: the house must be completely ready before the photographer arrives, not while they're working. Shoot time isn't prep time. Tidying one room ahead of the camera makes for a long, stressful session and it always shows in the results.
Two weeks out
- Do the staging work first. Decluttering, furniture edits, and paint all need to be finished before photos, not after. If you haven't been through it, start with the staging guide — photo prep assumes that's done.
- Walk every room and count the bulbs. Replace anything burnt out, and make every bulb within a single room the same type and colour temperature. Mixed warm and cool bulbs in one space are the most common avoidable problem in listing photos, and they're genuinely hard to fix afterward.
- Book the window cleaning. Inside and out. Windows are in nearly every interior shot and dirty glass flattens the light in all of them.
- Handle the exterior projects — power washing, touch-up paint, gutter clearing, mulch. These need dry-weather lead time.
The week of
- Deep clean the whole house, floors last.
- Carpets professionally cleaned if they need it — leave drying time.
- Mow, edge, and trim; in winter, keep the walk and drive cleared and sanded so a fresh snowfall isn't a crisis.
- Confirm the shoot time with your REALTOR® and ask which exterior angles are planned, so you know what needs to be clear.
- Arrange for pets and kids to be elsewhere for the shoot window.
The night before
- Everything off every kitchen and bathroom counter, then decide deliberately what goes back — one or two items, no more.
- Fridge front completely bare.
- Fresh, ironed bedding on every bed that will be photographed. Wrinkles are very visible in wide shots.
- Fresh white towels hung evenly in every bathroom — and don't use them.
- Cords bundled and hidden; remote controls, chargers, and tissue boxes out of sight.
- Bins, recycling, laundry baskets, cleaning supplies, and pet gear staged somewhere they can be closed away — a car, the garage, a single closet that won't be photographed.
- Charge the vacuum and set out one microfibre cloth for morning touch-ups.
Photo morning, in order
- Open every blind and curtain to the same height across the house — uneven blinds are conspicuous and get flagged constantly.
- Turn on every light: ceilings, lamps, under-cabinet, over-stove, closets, basement, exterior porch lights.
- Turn off ceiling fans and televisions. A moving fan blurs; a screen either glares or shows content that dates the photos.
- Toilet lids down in every bathroom.
- Move all vehicles off the driveway and away from the front of the house. Ask the neighbours if you reasonably can.
- Remove garbage bins, hoses, sprinklers, yard tools, and seasonal decorations from view.
- Last sweep: floors, then pull everything you've been carrying room to room out to the car.
- Take the pets and go, or stay quietly out of the way and be reachable by phone.
The things that get missed
These are the ones that show up in a finished photo set and can't be undone:
- Mirrors and glass. The photographer, the tripod, and the flash will appear in them. Clean them and expect the shooting angles to work around them.
- The lawn between the sidewalk and the road. It's in the main exterior shot and it's the strip everybody forgets to mow.
- Fingerprints on stainless steel — fridge doors, dishwasher fronts, range handles.
- The garage. It gets photographed and it's usually where everything got shoved. Give it a floor.
- Furnace room and hot water tank. Often shot for the listing; needs a clear path and nothing stacked against the equipment.
- Under-sink areas and the pantry if cabinet interiors are being shown.
- Personal information. Mail, prescriptions, cheques, calendars with names, kids' school papers, anything with an address on it. Once it's in a public listing photo, it's out there.
- Screens showing anything. Computers, tablets, smart displays, the thermostat if it's a bright one.
Planning around the season
Central Alberta gives you a genuinely different-looking house depending on the month, and it's worth being deliberate about it.
If you're listing in winter and the property shows well in green — mature trees, a good yard, a deck, acreage, or lake frontage — dig out summer photos of the exterior and yard. They can be included alongside current photos, clearly identified as taken in another season, and for rural and recreational properties in particular they do real work. If you know a spring or summer listing is coming, take good exterior shots now while it looks its best.
Working the other way: a winter shoot wants clean, crisp snow and a properly cleared drive and walk. Fresh snow photographs beautifully; churned-up slush and half-shovelled paths do not.
Beyond stills
Depending on the property, the shoot may also include drone exteriors, a video walkthrough, a floor plan, or twilight photos. Each adds time on site and each has its own prep. Drone work needs the yard, roof, and neighbouring sightlines clear and the weather cooperating. Floor plans need every room accessible, including closets and the mechanical room. Twilight shots need every light in the house on and someone available in the evening.
Which of these actually earn their place depends on the property and the price range, and that's a conversation worth having before the shoot is booked rather than after.
After the photos
Keep the house in photo condition. Buyers who arrive at a showing expecting what they saw online and find something else lose confidence quickly, and that gap is a common source of low offers. It's easier to maintain than to redo — and it's why the decluttering step earlier matters so much. A house with a third less stuff in it stays photo-ready almost on its own.
Next: what a buyer's inspector will find
Photos get buyers through the door. What can unwind a firm sale weeks later is the home inspection — and most of what shows up there is knowable in advance. The pre-listing inspection guide covers what inspectors flag in Alberta homes, and what to deal with before it becomes a price renegotiation.