How do you photograph a room with a phone?
Answer
Shoot landscape from a corner at chest height with every light on and the frame freshly decluttered — a current phone handles the rest. Wipe the lens first, tap to focus on the brightest wall, and take three versions of each angle. Height, level, and clutter control matter far more than the camera itself.
Modern phones outshoot the DSLR kits that took most older listings — provided you control the three things no camera can fix for you: height, level, and clutter.
Set your height and hold it. Shoot from about chest height, 1.2 to 1.4 meters — high enough to show the floor plane, low enough to keep ceilings natural. Hold the phone with both hands, elbows in, and turn on the grid so verticals — door frames, corners — stay vertical. Leaning verticals are the single biggest tell of an amateur frame.
Turn on every light, then use daylight. Lamps, pendants, even the range-hood light: bulbs read as warmth, and a space with all sources lit looks twice the size. Shoot during the day so windows fill the scene rather than glare into it, and draw sheers if a single window blows out to white.
Declutter more than feels reasonable. The camera sees what you stopped seeing: cables, dish racks, the pile of post. Clear surfaces to two or three objects, close lids, empty bins. A proper decluttering pass before shooting pays more than any lens upgrade.
Shoot corners, in landscape, and plenty. Stand in or near a corner and aim diagonally — diagonal framing captures two walls and real depth. Take three to five frames per position, shifting your stance slightly, then pick later. Landscape orientation matches how listing galleries display.
Edit with a light hand. Raise brightness and shadows a touch; skip filters, fake wide-angle modes, and heavy HDR halos. If a frame is good but soft or dim, fix it digitally: upload it and run image enhancement rather than reshooting.
Then pressure-test the keepers against what actually stops a scroll: what makes a hero shot.