How to Make Your Home Stand Out During a Virtual Tour

Virtual tours are hardly a new trend in real estate. For years now, people have been using virtual tours as an efficient way to draw in potential buyers and promote their home. And, during those years, we’ve learned a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t. So, in this article we will take a look at the basics and teach you how to make your home stand out during a virtual tour.

Virtual tours are especially beneficial for buying a house remotely. After all, if a potential new home is far away, there is hardly a better way to experience it. Also, purchasing a new home remotely allows a buyer to save some time and money on traveling. 

Steps to making your home stand out during a virtual tour

When used correctly, virtual tours can be an excellent tool for home promotion. They offer an immersive way to showcase your home, which can be quite refreshing compared to standard pictures, diagrams, or videos. However, like any other tool, virtual tours are useless if you don’t know how to use them properly. You need to adhere to certain basics and consider some artistic choices if your virtual tour is to be worthwhile.

Clean your home

While this may seem obvious to some of you, we still feel the need to mention that decluttering your home before making a virtual tour is necessary. Know that there is a difference between cleaning your home for a shoot and tidying up. When cleaning up your home for a virtual tour, you need to make it look spotless. Cleaning, dusting, rearranging items, everything needs to be in perfect order. If there are any visible issues with the floor or roof, you will need to repair them. Ideally, your home should look like one of those that you see in commercials.

If you look closely, you will see that such homes don’t look like someone is living in them. And, whether you like it or not, this look is something that you should strive for. If you cannot fit your items into the storage space in your home, feel free to rent a storage unit. If you need to put a considerable amount of things into your unit, try to make room for unnecessary household items, so you won’t have to rent more than one. Look for ways to maximize the use of the space in your storage.  But, before anything, it would be best to declutter, as the whole process can take a while.

Tell a visual story

Once your home is clean, there is an essential principle that we would like for you to keep in mind. A virtual home tour will only work if you manage to tell a story with it. There is more to it than only going around your home and explaining which room serves which purpose. Instead, you need to consider who you are selling to and then orient your presentation to fit them.

For instance, say that you are selling a suburban house. After consulting with a realtor, you decide that your target buyers should be young families looking for a quiet place to settle down. Your goal then should be to make your home as family-friendly as possible. Warm lighting, comfortable furniture, cozy colors, ease of use… All of these give the impression that your home is suitable for a family. So, the more you emphasize all of these aspects to tell a unified, visual story, the easier it will be to sell your home.

Using the right lighting and colors

The first thing to note when it comes to lighting is that you should use natural light. Artificial light sources don’t look nice on camera. And, more importantly, they tend to make the whole room look subpar. So, stick with natural light.

The question now becomes when to shoot. Well, this is where the storytelling element comes into play. If you are trying to present your home as a modern, well-situated living space for a young professional, use early morning. Early morning light is bright, which will give your home the feeling of energy and aliveness. On the other hand, if you are selling a family home, the afternoon is your best option. Afternoon light gives the feeling of comfort and homeyness that you can hardly mimic with artificial lights.

Similar ideas apply to colors. If you are catering towards young professionals, use colder colors like blue or green. These give the feeling of openness while providing a certain sense of calm. For a family home, warmer colors like yellow or dark orange are better choices since they are cozier. Of course, these are just examples, and you need to see what functions with your home instead of blindingly following them. But, they do give you a good idea of how to think.

Highlight the best features

One of the mistakes that people often make is that they try to highlight everything about their home. The bathroom, the bedroom, the living room… Everything is showcased to its fullest potential. Unfortunately, this often proves counterproductive. This is because if everything is emphasized, nothing is. Again, you need to consider your home carefully and decide what its best aspects are. If everything is good, that’s fantastic. But still, try to see what is the best feature. Then proceed to highlight it.

Consult with professionals

The final way to make your home stand out during a virtual tour is to hire a professional. Even now, you probably realize that there are many aspects here to consider, especially if you genuinely want your virtual tour to tell a story. So, do the cost-effective thing and hire a professional. With professional equipment, years of experience, and knowledge of current trends, they will be able to spruce up your home and develop a virtual tour to make it shine.

Written by Sophia Perry – Edited by Ashley Pasquale