Your lounge is actually quite a nice room.

Unfortunately, the property photograph makes it look like a tunnel with a sofa at the end.

The kitchen looks smaller than it feels.

The garden photograph was apparently taken during a weather warning.

And for reasons nobody can explain, the first image buyers see is the downstairs toilet.

Welcome to selling a perfectly decent house badly online.

Most buyers don't begin by standing outside your Peterborough home admiring the brickwork.

They begin with a thumb.

Scroll.

Scroll.

Pause.

Scroll.

Your photographs have seconds to earn that pause.

Don't make buyers play “Guess The Missing Room”

Five photographs of a three-bedroom house immediately create questions.

Where's bedroom three?

Why isn't there a photograph of the bathroom?

What does the back garden look like?

Is there actually somewhere to park?

Sometimes there's an innocent explanation.

Buyers don't know that.

If an important room or feature is missing, some will assume there's a reason you didn't want them to see it.

Show enough of the property for somebody to understand what they're considering.

That doesn't mean photographing every cupboard.

It does mean not making the second bedroom mysteriously disappear.

Clear the surfaces don't remove all signs of human life

You don't need to make your home look as though nobody has ever lived there.

You do want buyers looking at the room rather than wondering why there are seventeen bottles beside the bath.

Kitchen worktops disappear remarkably quickly beneath appliances, washing-up, paperwork and the objects that apparently have nowhere else to live.

Clear enough away to show the space.

Make beds.

Move the laundry.

Open curtains.

Hide the bin if it's dominating the kitchen photograph.

And check mirrors.

Nothing improves an estate-agent photograph quite like discovering the photographer reflected in the wardrobe door afterwards.

Be very careful with the magic expanding lens

Wide-angle photography can help buyers understand a room.

Taken too far, it can also make an ordinary bedroom look capable of hosting five-a-side football.

That may win the click.

Then the buyer arrives.

“Oh. It's much smaller than it looked.”

That's not a successful photograph.

It's simply moved the disappointment from the website to your hallway.

The same applies to editing.

Brightening a gloomy photograph is one thing.

Digitally removing an inconvenient crack, changing the kitchen or hiding something outside the window is quite another.

Your photographs should make the real home look its best.

Not advertise a better home that doesn't exist.

Don't hide the awkward side

Perhaps the garden backs onto a car park.

Maybe the main bedroom faces a busy road.

Perhaps the side access is narrow.

One Peterborough buyer may hate that.

Another may not care in the slightest.

The photographs don't need to lead with every compromise, but deliberately avoiding important parts of the property can make the whole listing feel evasive.

Peterborough changes quickly from street to street.

A house overlooking open space presents differently from one on a busy road, even when the floorplans are similar.

Let buyers understand what they're coming to see.

You'll waste fewer viewings with people for whom the location or setting was never going to work.

Make the photographs look like they came from the same house

We've all seen listings where photograph one looks warm and yellow, photograph two looks blue, and photograph three appears to have been sharpened until the dining table could cut glass.

Consistency matters.

The photographs should feel like one honest tour of the same home.

Professional photography can help, particularly with difficult rooms or properties where the setting is part of the appeal.

Drone photography might make sense for a Peterborough property with substantial land or a setting that can't be understood from ground level.

For an ordinary semi with a normal garden, sending something into orbit may be less essential.

Ask what the photography package actually includes rather than assuming more technology automatically means better marketing.

Now perform the five-photo test

Before the listing goes live, open it on your phone.

Not the estate agent's enormous office monitor.

Your phone.

Look only at the first five photographs.

Can you quickly tell:

What sort of home is this?

What are the main living spaces like?

What's its best feature?

Does it look bright and cared for?

Is there anything that will feel misleading when somebody arrives?

Then hand the phone to somebody who doesn't live there.

You'll be amazed what they notice.

You stopped seeing the extension lead behind the sofa approximately four years ago.

They haven't.

And if the first five photographs don't make you want to see the sixth, ask whether the order needs changing.

Because your home doesn't have to look like a magazine shoot.

It just has to make somebody scrolling through dozens of Peterborough properties think:

“Actually, I'd like to see that one.”

If you've been house hunting recently, what makes you immediately swipe past a property listing dark photographs, clutter, missing rooms, bizarre camera angles or something else?

Tell us in the comments.