Spare room, extra cash...
A great way to make some extra money!
Renting a spare room out Monday to Friday is a great way to make a bit of extra cash, in fact, you can earn £7,500 a year tax free. It can also be a good way to keep your home occupied if you work away during the week, or a nice way to make a new friend to share a cuppa and a chat with in the evenings.
We are mondaytofriday.com. We’ve been advertising spare rooms that are available to rent during the working week for well over a decade. Once you’ve made the decision to rent out your spare room, you’ve freshened it up, now it’s time to show off the results. To maximise your advertising potential, you will need some impressive photos, here we’ve put together some tips that might just help.
Styling
Tidy up, put away, make the bed, do the washing up, put the toilet seat down! It might seem obvious but you don’t always notice things when you live with them, but fresh eyes will. Once it’s all cleared away, add back a few carefully chosen items to enhance the shot.
Lighting
Try and take your photo in natural light if possible. The photographer’s golden hours are shortly after sunrise or late afternoon, when the daylight is softer. Try not to shoot directly at the window as this creates too much contrast with the light and dark shadows. Turning on lamps can create interest.
The whole room
It is tempting to take an ‘estate agent’ shot and try to get the whole room into the photo, if you need to, back yourself right up against the wall or into a corner. Alternatively, try a more interesting angle, for example, through a doorway that frames the view. Try and tell a story or give a flavour of your life with a lifestyle shot - a table & chairs next to open French windows with the garden in the background. If you have an amazing view include a photo of that, if the exterior of your house is interesting add that too, it will give a flavour of where you live.
If you were choosing a place to stay what would you want to see in a photo?
Composition
Eye level shots look down into the room and skew the lines into weird angles, hold your camera much lower than you think (ideally chest height or even lower). It doesn’t always make the most interesting photo if everything is bang in the centre, turn on the grid on your camera or phone and follow the rule of thirds, the grid is divided into nine squares, try and get the focal point into one of the squares e.g the bottom third.
Good luck! We look forward to seeing some stunning photos accompanying your adverts.