Interiors or architecture — which page you want
This page covers interiors: the room, the scheme, the finish, the styling, a shot for a portfolio, a press submission or a supplier’s catalogue. If what you need is the building itself, the elevations, the form, how it reads from the street, that’s a different job: architectural photography from £350.
Most projects need both at some point. I shoot both, but not on the same lens or the same clock. A room shoot is measured in minutes per space; a building shoot is measured in hours per elevation, waiting for the sun to move round. Book the right one first, and the second follows once the space is finished, not before.
Who I shoot for
Five kinds of client book this, each wanting something different from the same room.
Interior designers and developers
A designer needs the scheme to read as a decision: colour, texture, how two pieces sit against each other, for a portfolio or a magazine submission. A developer marketing a show home needs the same room to sell a lifestyle to someone who has never seen the flat. Both want the room at its best, shot slowly enough to look considered, not snapped in passing.
Furniture, lighting and hospitality brands
A furniture or lighting brand wants their piece photographed in a real room rather than on white, proof it works somewhere a person lives. Hotels and members’ clubs want the same thing at scale, hotel and hospitality interiors across a whole property rather than one scheme, and I’ve shot both from the same visit before now.
Architects documenting a fit-out
Where a practice has finished the interior of a building it also designed, this sits closer to the architecture brief than to a developer’s show home. See interiors from London homes and hotels for what a finished scheme looks like across different budgets.
Interior photography prices
A half day starts at £350 and covers four to six spaces, enough for most flats and a good part of a house. A full day runs £650 to £850 and covers a whole scheme, ten to twelve spaces, with time built in for the light in each space rather than rushed. See full pricing across every service for how this sits against the rest of what I shoot.
| Booking | Spaces covered | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Half day | 4–6 spaces | £350 |
| Full day | Whole scheme, 10–12 spaces | £650–£850 |
| Per-room rate | Fewer than 4 rooms | £95 per room |
| Styling assistant | Brought in for the day | +£150 |
| Twilight add-on | One dusk exposure | +£120 |
| Extended licence | Another party’s commercial use | from £100 |
What moves the number most, in order:
- How many spaces need genuine styling attention rather than a straight shoot
- Whether a stylist travels with me or I do the tidying myself
- Whether a twilight exposure is needed on top of the daytime set
- Whether a party beyond the designer needs to licence the images commercially
How this differs from estate-agent photography
An estate agent’s photograph has one job: sell the floor plan in the twenty seconds someone spends scrolling past it on a property portal. Wide lens, even light, every room visible at once, twenty minutes per room including the walk between them. That’s property photography for agents, a good, cheap, fast product built for exactly that purpose.
A designer’s photograph sells a decision that took nine months to make: the fabric against the joinery, the way two lamps talk to each other across a room. That takes closer to three hours a room, not twenty minutes, waiting for the light, adjusting a blind, moving a chair two inches and moving it back. Different lens choices too, longer and flatter, because nobody buying a sofa wants it stretched toward the edges.
I’ll say this plainly: a designer paying agent rates gets agent photographs. The two aren’t the same product shot at different speeds. They’re different crafts, and the price difference reflects the time, not padding.
Light, and the London room problem
Most London interiors have one window and often a north aspect, which means the room has one usable light source for a few hours a day and nothing dependable after that. A Victorian conversion in Peckham or a mansion block in Maida Vale behaves the same way: good light arrives on its own schedule, and the shoot works around it, not the other way round.
My approach is to book the time of day the room actually works, then fill the shadows with a flash bounced off the ceiling rather than trying to light the whole space evenly. A basement kitchen with one small lightwell is never going to look like a Californian one with glass on three sides, and no amount of post-production changes that. Anyone promising otherwise is selling something.
Here’s my honest opinion, and it puts me at odds with a fair amount of interiors work I see online: heavy HDR bracketing is the fastest way to spot a rushed shoot. It flattens contrast, kills the sense of where the light falls, and makes every room look lit the same regardless of what it has. A room shot well, at the right hour, needs less of it, not more.
Styling: what I will and won’t do
I will move a cushion, straighten a rug, bin an obvious bin, turn a lamp on instead of off, close a cupboard door left ajar. That’s tidying, and it takes minutes. I am not a stylist, and if a scheme needs cut flowers, borrowed accessories or a considered edit of what is on every surface, it needs an actual stylist booked alongside me, not instead of me.
Treat a half day as a styling session by accident and you will lose two spaces you had planned to shoot, because dressing a room properly eats the time meant for the light. Sort styling before the day, not on it. See how to brief an interior photographer for what to prepare in advance, and building an interior design portfolio is worth reading if this shoot needs to do more than one job.
Small flats and awkward spaces
A 3.2-metre-wide Victorian bedroom with the bed against one wall gives you nowhere to put a tripod behind the lens, and a lot of London stock is built exactly like this. The instinct is to reach for the widest lens in the bag. I would argue that is usually the wrong call.
A 16mm at close range stretches the corners until the room looks like a different, worse room. I shoot closer to 24mm, from the doorway where I can, and accept two true walls in frame rather than four distorted ones.
Some flats simply don’t have an angle that shows the whole room, and no lens fixes that honestly. For the kit and the workarounds in more detail, see photographing small London flats.
Licensing for designers and brands
A single shoot often has four parties who want to use the same images, and each needs its own permission:
- The designer, for their own portfolio and website
- The client, for their own records or a private reference, not their own marketing unless agreed separately
- A furniture supplier whose piece appears in shot, for their own commercial advertising
- A magazine, working to its own editorial credit and terms
None of that is automatic just because someone appears in the frame. I retain copyright as standard and licence use by party and by purpose. It is more paperwork than one blanket arrangement, but it avoids an argument later about who agreed to what. See how image usage rights work in the UK for the full picture.
Send me the scheme and the number of rooms you need photographed, and I’ll reply within one working day with a date and a price.