There is a preconceived notion that photography for interior design and real estate photography are closely aligned but this couldn’t be further from the truth.

The following explains the key differentiators between these two types of photography to help you understand the distinction.

Interior Design Photography

Collaboration with an interior designer or an interior stylist, sets the stage to create a feeling and ‘a visual moment’ — with intentionality. This with the sole purpose of professionally highlighting a designer’s use of colors and textures as well as product selections and remodeled spaces.

The photography process is slow and methodical. A professional photographer will collaborate with an interior designer on the best angles to achieve the designer’s vision. This starts by scouting each room to evaluate natural lighting, furniture placement, composition, and positive/negative space.

In addition, lens selection is key when photographing spaces. Using ultra-wide angle lenses often used in real estate photography will add distortion that is undesirable for this style of photography. Generally the max width for interior design will be a 24mm lens.

More importantly, serious interior design photographers shoot tethered. Why? As part of the collaborative process, a photographer and designer can instantly review the images on a laptop in real-time for compositional review and approval. Shooting tethered streamlines the process and removes any guess work — especially in post production.

Interior design photography is typically booked using a day rate instead of a per image rate used in the real estate photography industry. This is because this type of photography should never be rushed or be based on volume. In this scenario we are focused on quality over quantity.

In this highly-competitive field of interior design, interior design photography requires the demands of a highly stylized photoshoot to be used in a designer's portfolio, in editorial magazines, and for industry award submissions. This type of photography is an investment that pays off in dividends for many years.

Real Estate Photography

Photography for real estate is substantially different in aesthetic and pricing. Contracted real estate photographers typically have about an hour to photograph an entire home.

Real estate agents require turnaround on images and in this business — it’s a numbers game.

Real Estate photographers need to work professionally and quickly to help facilitate the listing and marketing of newly listed homes. This is a volume driven market and slowing down to highly stylize an interior space is simply out of scope for this type of photography.

Other factors that affect the overall style of the real estate images:

• Rooms are photographed with all lights on whereas with interior design photography, natural light is used.

• Ultra-wide angle lenses are employed to capture the entirety of a room.

• Post-processing is often automated without customization in place to address a custom-style profile for the client required of interior design clients.

In summary, while real estate photographers are equally as highly-skilled at their craft, their volume-based model does not lend itself to a highly collaborative environment artistically and stylistically.

Essentially the difference is the objective and final output from two separate disciplines.