Which photos do you take at the first home visit?

After the home visit you work for days or weeks with the photos you took there. A missing photo costs you an extra trip or a message to the client. With this list you get everything in one visit.

An overview of each room from the door

In each room, start in the doorway and take a photo of the whole room. Then stand in the corners and photograph the opposite side. With four corners you have every wall in view at least once.

Take photos in daylight with the lights off, so the colours are right. Do not point your camera at the window, because the rest of the room gets too dark. Use the wide angle on your phone if the room is small.

Each wall straight on

Take a photo of each wall straight on, at chest height. You can measure and sketch on a photo like that later. Where a piece of furniture has to go, put a tape measure in the photo, or take a photo of the tape against the wall.

Details you will need later

These are the things you miss most often when you design:

• Sockets, switches and light points in the ceiling.
• Radiators, the fuse box and other things that cannot move.
• The floor up close, and where it changes to another floor.
• Window frames, window sills and the height of the ceiling.
• The view from the window, and where the sun comes in.

What the client wants to keep

Ask which furniture and things stay, and take a separate photo of them. Grandma's cabinet or the rug from Morocco help decide how the rest will look. Write down the sizes too.

Ask permission before you take photos, and keep personal things like family photos out of view where you can. A photo of the room as it is now goes into your presentation later, and a presentation sometimes gets forwarded.

Sort them by room straight away

Put the photos with the right room on the same day. After three home visits you will not remember whether that light floor belonged to the family in Utrecht or the one in Amersfoort.

In Softmint you put the photos from your phone straight into the presentation. They go into the tray, and from there you drag them to the right slide. How this works is in Adding photos from your phone. Where those photos go in the presentation is in How to present a concept your client understands the first time.