Project galleries that win renovation jobs: how to build them

Your finished kitchens and bathrooms are the best sales material your business has. On many renovator websites they sit in one long gallery with no captions, so a buyer can’t tell which job was a full renovation, which suburb it was in or whether it is anything like their own room. Photos alone rarely answer those questions.

The fix is to treat each finished job as a small story with its own page. This guide covers how to structure a project page, which photos to take on every job, what to write, how Google reads your images, how to handle the homeowner’s permission and privacy, and how to organise the whole collection so buyers can find work like theirs.

Project pages, not photo albums

A project page gives one finished job its own address on your website, with photos and words together. An album shows the work. A project page explains it, which is what a buyer comparing renovators needs.

A good renovation project page has the same parts every time:

• A clear title that names the room and the area, such as “Main bathroom rebuild, Brisbane northside”.
• A lead photo of the finished room from its best angle.
• The brief in two or three sentences: what the owners wanted and what was wrong with the old room.
• The scope as a short list: layout changes, waterproofing, cabinetry, benchtops, tiling, fixtures.
• A short gallery of the room from other angles, a few details and one or two progress shots.
• Links to the matching service page and a way to enquire about a similar job.

That structure suits every kind of renovation business. The page for kitchen renovators shows how project pages sit alongside kitchen service pages, and our sample designs show project cards laid out for kitchens, bathrooms and joinery.

What should you photograph on every job?

Use the same shot list on every job so every project page has what it needs. Take the photos after the final clean and before the owners move their things back in, when the room is as close to finished as it will ever look.

Finished shots

• The wide shot from the doorway or the corner that shows the most of the room.
• The opposite angle, so buyers understand the layout.
• The feature: the island, the shower niche, the vanity wall or the butler’s pantry.
• Two or three details: a benchtop edge, tile set-out at a corner, drawer internals, tapware.
• Before, if you have it, from roughly the same position as the wide shot.

Progress shots

Take one or two photos of the work that disappears. For bathrooms that is the waterproofing membrane and the falls to the waste. For kitchens it might be new plumbing and electrical rough-in, or the framing behind a moved wall. These photos show care in a way a finished shot can’t, and buyers who have lived through a bad renovation look for them.

Getting the photos right

Shoot in daylight with the lights on, hold the phone level at about chest height, and step back rather than using a wide lens that bends the cabinetry. Remove tea towels, bins, bottles and anything on the benchtop that is not part of the design. Keep the original files. Photos downloaded again from a social post are often smaller and lower quality.

What to write for each project

Write short, specific notes a buyer can scan in under a minute. The words are what turn a nice photo into evidence that you can handle a job like theirs.

For each project, cover:

1. The starting point. A dated kitchen with no bench space, a leaking shower, a laundry in a cupboard.
2. What the owners wanted. More storage, a walk-in shower, room for two people to cook.
3. What you did. The scope in plain words, including trades you coordinated.
4. The tricky part. A wall that was not square, a moved waste, an apartment with lift access only.
5. Materials. Door finish, benchtop type, tile size, tapware finish, described generically unless the supplier allows its names.

Avoid the phrases every renovator uses, like “quality workmanship” and “stunning transformation”. Specific details do more. “We moved the toilet to make room for a walk-in shower, and regraded the floor to the new waste” tells the next buyer far more than a line of adjectives.

You don’t have to write polished copy. On our plan you send rough notes or a voice memo with the photos, and we turn them into the project page. See what’s included for how project pages fit into the site.

How Google reads your project photos

Google reads the words around and inside your images, not just the pixels. Its image guidance covers three simple habits that suit project pages well.

Alt text. Google says alt text ¹ is the most important attribute for giving it more information about an image. Alt text is also what a screen reader says aloud. Describe what is in the photo: “Galley kitchen with dark green cabinets, white stone benchtop and brass handles” is useful. “Kitchen 1” is not, and a list of keywords helps nobody.

File names. Google recommends short, descriptive filenames ¹ , and gives the example that my-new-black-kitten.jpg is better than IMG00023.JPG. For renovators that means ensuite-walk-in-shower-niche.jpg rather than whatever the phone called it.

Placement. Google also recommends placing images near relevant text ¹ on pages relevant to the image’s subject. That is exactly what a project page does: bathroom photos sit next to the description of the bathroom job, on a page about bathroom renovations.

Page speed matters too. Large photo files straight off a phone slow a page down, especially on mobile data. Resize and compress images before they go on the site, and serve modern formats where you can. None of this guarantees a ranking, but it removes reasons for a buyer to give up before the page loads.

Getting permission, and protecting the owner’s privacy

Ask the homeowner for permission before you publish photos of their home, and get the yes in writing. A line in your contract or handover form works, as long as the owner can say no without it affecting the job.

Before a project page goes live, check every photo for:

• Street numbers, letterboxes, car number plates and views that identify the house.
• Family photos, children’s artwork, names on school bags and mail on the bench.
• People. If a customer or crew member is in the shot, ask them too, or crop them out.
• Security details such as alarm panels and safes.

Use a suburb or region rather than a street, and never publish the job price without the owner’s agreement. Under the Privacy Act, a small business is generally one with an annual turnover of $3 million or less ³ , and some small businesses are covered regardless of turnover. Whether or not the Act applies to you, treating the owner’s home and details carefully is part of being someone they would recommend.

If you post the same photos on social media, the same checks apply. Our guide to websites and Facebook pages covers how to split what goes where.

How should you organise the gallery?

Group projects by room type first, because that is how buyers think. Someone with a small ensuite wants small ensuites. A projects page with filters or sections for kitchens, bathrooms, ensuites, laundries and joinery lets them get there in one tap.

Start small. With three finished kitchens, one projects page is enough. Split into separate sections once each would have at least a few jobs in it. A section with one lonely project looks worse than a single well-kept page.

Resist the temptation to copy a project page for every suburb near the job. Google’s spam policies describe having multiple pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page as doorway abuse ² . Mention the area in each real project, and keep one honest service area page that lists where you work.

Keep the collection growing. On our plan, adding a finished project counts as a content edit, and up to 5 are included each month, so one project a month is easy to keep up.

What to do next

1. Save the shot list above on your phone and use it at the next handover.
2. Add a photo permission line to your contract or handover form.
3. Pick your three best finished jobs and gather the original photo files for each.
4. Rename the files to describe the room, and write five short notes per job using the list above.
5. Check every photo for addresses, faces and personal items before anything is published.
6. Decide how to group your projects, starting with the room type you want more work in.

A handful of well-made project pages will do more for a renovation business than a gallery of hundreds of unlabelled photos. If you would like those pages built and kept up to date for you, see the plan and its price, or book a call and bring your three best jobs.