How to take 360 photos of a home with your iPhone

Search for how to take 360 photos with an iPhone and the first thing you'll find is the Pano mode in the Camera app. It's great for a view from a hilltop. For showing a home it falls short. This article explains why, what a 360 photo really is, and how to get one of every room with just your iPhone.

The iPhone panorama vs a real 360 photo

What Pano mode does

Pano is built into the Camera app: you select it, tap the shutter and sweep the phone slowly along the arrow. Apple covers it in the iPhone User Guide.

What you get is a long, thin image: one horizontal band of the room. For property, that has three problems:

• No ceiling or floor. You only see the middle band.
• You can't look around in it. It's a very wide flat photo. On a portal or in a message it shows up as a narrow strip.
• Straight lines bend. In small rooms, walls and nearby furniture curve noticeably.

What a real 360 photo is

A 360 photo covers the whole sphere around the camera: 360° horizontally and 180° vertically. It's stored as a flat rectangular image in equirectangular format, twice as wide as it is tall, which a viewer turns into an interactive view. Whoever opens it drags with a finger or moves their phone and can look anywhere, as if they were standing in the room.

For a home that changes a lot. You see the ceiling, the condition of the floor, where the sockets are, how the light comes through the window. Link the 360 photos of every room together and you have a virtual tour.

The short version: Pano mode isn't 360. For real estate 360 photography with only an iPhone, use a guided capture app and turn on one spot.

Three ways to take 360 photos with an iPhone

1. By hand, with lots of photos and stitching software

You can take dozens of photos turning on the spot, in several rows (eye level, up, down), then stitch them on a computer. It works, but it's slow, the overlap between shots is hard to get right, and the seams often break indoors where furniture is close to the lens.

Older guides also point you to Google's Street View app for photo spheres. Google retired that app in 2023, so that route is gone.

2. With a 360 camera

A dual-lens 360 camera captures the whole sphere in one shot and is controlled from your iPhone. It's quick and gives good results, but it's another device to buy, charge and carry. If you're considering one, we compare them in the best 360 camera for real estate.

3. With an app that guides the capture

This is the practical route if you only want to use your phone. The app tells you where to point, takes each shot with the right overlap and stitches them into a 360° panorama on its own. You just turn and follow the prompts.

How to take 360 photos for real estate, step by step

These steps work with any guided capture app.

1. Prepare the room

Switch on every light and open the blinds. Remove anything you don't want in the shot: in a 360 photo everything shows, including what's behind you. Leave doors to other rooms open.

2. Stand near the centre

Pick a spot where the room reads well, usually near the middle. Keep away from furniture: anything very close to the lens is the hardest thing to stitch without a visible join.

3. Keep the same exposure for every shot

If each shot is exposed separately, the one facing the window comes out dark and the one facing the wall comes out bright, and the finished panorama shows bands. Good capture apps lock exposure and white balance at the start so every frame matches. If you're shooting by hand, press and hold on the screen until AE/AF Lock appears before you begin.

4. Rotate around the phone, not around yourself

The iPhone needs to turn on almost the same point. If you turn your body with your arm out, the camera moves a few centimetres between shots and nearby objects get doubled edges. Shuffle around the phone in small steps while keeping it in place at chest height.

5. Follow the targets on screen

A good app shows you one target at a time. You point at it, hold still for a moment and it moves on. That covers several bands around the room, including up towards the ceiling and down towards the floor.

6. Check the result

Once the app has stitched the shots, open the panorama and look all the way around. Check the seams over nearby furniture, the windows and any mirrors (it's easy to catch yourself in one). If something's off, redoing a single room takes very little time.

Tips for better 360 photos of a home

• One 360 photo per room is usually enough. Large or L-shaped open-plan spaces may need two.
• Avoid shooting straight into the sun. If it's pouring in, lower the blind slightly or come back at another time.
• Same height in every room. Moving between rooms feels more natural when the eye level doesn't jump.
• Watch for mirrors and glass shower screens. Find a spot where you're not reflected head-on.
• Name every room. It helps people find their way around the tour.

When the 360 photo is the point, a dedicated camera is still the faster tool if you shoot several homes a day. For an agent doing a couple of listings a week, the phone is usually enough, and it's always with you at the valuation.

Doing it with RoomTour

RoomTour is our iPhone app, and it handles these steps for you:

1. Locks exposure and white balance at the start of each room, so the panorama doesn't show bands.
2. Guides you one target at a time, about 30 shots per room in several bands, up to the ceiling and down to the floor.
3. Stitches the 360° panorama on the phone. You can check it straight away and redo the room if something's off.
4. Builds a tour of every room with an approximate floor plan. The plan is for finding your way round, not for measuring.
5. Gives you a link to send or embed on your website, and an A4 QR window card in English or Spanish, with no watermark during the launch. The app shows how many times each tour has been opened.

See the result in the example tour. The app is free for early users.

For the full process across a whole property, including preparation and sharing the link, see how to make a virtual tour for real estate with your phone.

Frequently asked questions

Can you take 360 photos with an iPhone?

Not with the Camera app alone. Its Pano mode makes a wide horizontal strip with no ceiling or floor. For a full 360° photo you need a guided capture app that takes overlapping shots and stitches them into a sphere, or a separate 360 camera.

How do you take 360 photos for real estate?

Prepare the room (lights on, blinds up, clutter away), stand near the centre, lock the exposure, and rotate the phone on one spot while a guided app takes shots at eye level, up and down. The app stitches them into one 360° panorama per room.

Which iPhone do I need for 360 photos?

With a guided capture app you don't need a Pro model with LiDAR. What matters is the main camera and the phone's motion tracking, which current iPhones all have.

Can I post a 360 photo on Instagram or Rightmove as an image?

You can upload it, but as a flat image it looks like a stretched, warped strip. It needs a 360 viewer to look around in, which is why agents share a tour link rather than the raw file.