Do I Need to Clean for My In-Home Session?

As an in-home photographer, one of my most asked questions for how to prepare for your photoshoot is ‘do I need to clean?’. Let’s talk about it!

So many of us in the Bay Area can't afford brand new or recently remodeled homes. So we buy fixer-uppers in up-and-coming neighborhoods. We invest in new baseboards, and re-finish floors and hang shelves late into the night. We create a space that is so personal to us, and sometimes, we do that by hand.

Some of us may not own our home or apartment. We spend time curating each thing we bring into it and put rental friendly wallpaper on the walls and use 3M hooks to hang our family portraits.

We take so much time making these places our own.

Because so many of us don’t just spend time in our bedrooms, I always recommend that people tidy up all of their most used areas of their home. You absolutely do not have to clean baseboards and dust fans, but anything in your space has the potential to be photographed, so stuffing colorful plastic toys or piles of dirty clothes into a closet is a good idea.

If you do love certain parts of your space, I would highly recommend having those photo ready so we can document your life in your home beyond just the bedroom. This family, for example, just completed their remodel and they did it all themselves. Sure, they get to enjoy it, but when are you ever photographed in your kitchen even if that's where you hang out the whole time? This family in particular had such a beautiful, clearly loved home. They told me about how they spend their days cuddled up in the living room, and cooking together in the kitchen. You can bet I'm not going to let all that work go to waste!

You will be photographed in all of those special spaces, because if you hand-tiled a kitchen, and make memories every day in that space that you loving crafted, you can bet your ass I'm photographing you in it.

That said, if you’ve just had a baby or are in the midst of a remodel, or are in the thick of parenting and can’t prepare a whole house for a shoot, that’s fine, too! I’ve had plenty of shoots where we’ve just stuck to one room. It’s YOUR shoot, and we do what works for you!

Do you have a house that's you've made a home in San Francisco, Marin or Sonoma? I’d love to photograph it.

You can see all of my in-home options for newborn, family and maternity here.