Before-and-after photos: how to show your work online

Before-and-after photos on a website work when the two pictures are clearly the same place, taken from the same spot, side by side, with a short caption saying what was done. They need the customer's consent, especially when the photos show their home, car or face. And they work best placed on the page for that service, with the most impressive and most typical pairs first, rather than all dumped into one gallery.

Why pairs work so well

A single "after" photo shows a nice deck. A before-and-after pair shows what you did: the rotten boards, the sagging rail, and then the finished job. For trades that transform something, like painting, roofing, landscaping, cleaning, detailing, flooring, remodeling, tree work, pressure washing, upholstery, or dental and cosmetic work, the pair tells the story faster than any paragraph.

Taking pairs that match

The single most important rule: take the "after" photo from the same spot, at the same angle, as the "before". If they do not line up, the viewer cannot compare them, and the effect is lost.

Mark your spot. Before you start, note where you are standing: by the corner of the garage, at the top of the stairs. Some people put a small piece of tape on the floor.
Hold the phone the same way. Same height, same direction, same orientation (upright or sideways).
Use the same zoom. Do not zoom in for one and out for the other.
Shoot at a similar time of day if outdoors, so the light is close. A gray before and a sunny after can look like you are cheating with weather.
Take a few of each. Wide shots for context, close-ups for detail. Pair wide with wide and close with close.

Many phones can show a faint grid on the camera screen; turn it on in your camera settings. It makes lining up the second shot much easier. For more on phone technique, see how to take good photos for your website with a phone.

Keep them honest

Customers trust before-and-after photos because they look like proof. Keep it that way:

Do not edit the after photo to look better than the job. Straightening and cropping are fine. Brightening the after but not the before, or retouching flaws, is not.
Use your own work only. Never use pairs from another company or from the internet.
Do not stage the before to look worse than it was.
Show typical results, not only your single best job ever. For cosmetic, dental or health-related work, be especially careful not to suggest every patient gets the same result, and check any rules your profession or state sets.

A before-and-after pair usually shows someone's property, and sometimes their face or body. Ask first:

Homes and businesses. Ask the owner if you can show photos of the work on your website. Offer to leave out the house number, the street, or anything that identifies where they live.
Cars. Blur or crop license plates.
People. Hair, makeup, dental, fitness, skin treatments: get clear written consent, and agree on whether their face will be shown. Many people agree to a cropped photo but not a full face.
Personal items. Family photos on the wall, mail on the counter, a computer screen. Crop them out or move them before the shot.

A short message works: "Would you mind if we used before and after photos of your kitchen on our website? We won't show your address." Keep their reply. Our guide on photo permission and pictures you find online covers more on rights.

Captions that explain the job

A pair with no caption leaves people guessing what you did. A short caption tells them, in a line or two:

What the problem was. "Peeling paint and soft wood on a 1920s porch."
What you did. "Replaced two posts and the railing, scraped, primed and painted."
Where and when, roughly. "Montclair, summer 2025."
How long it took, if that is a selling point. "Two days."

Label each photo clearly as "Before" and "After" so nobody gets confused on a small screen. Write the caption in normal text on the page, not inside the image, so it can be read aloud by screen readers and searched.

How to lay them out

Side by side works on computers; on phones, pairs usually stack, with the before on top. Check that the order still makes sense on your phone.
Sliders, where you drag a line across to reveal the after, look clever, but they can be fiddly on phones and hard for some users. Use them sparingly, if at all.
One pair per row, with its caption, rather than a grid of tiny thumbnails.
Same size for both photos in a pair, so they line up.

Where to put them and in what order

On each service page, put two or three pairs for that service. Someone reading about driveway sealing wants driveways, not bathrooms.
On the home page, show one strong pair near the top or middle.
On a gallery page, collect the rest, grouped by service. See a gallery page that helps.
Order: lead with a pair that is both impressive and typical of the work you want more of. Then mix sizes of job, so visitors see you handle both small and large.
Refresh a few times a year with recent jobs, so the newest work is not from years ago.

For bigger jobs with a story, a pair can become a short project page; see project stories.

What to do this week

Make "before photo" the first step of every job from now on.
Turn on the grid in your phone's camera settings.
Go through recent jobs and find any pairs you already have.
Ask those customers for permission to show them.
Write a two-line caption for your three best pairs and put them on the matching service pages.

If you have good pairs sitting on your phone and an old site that cannot show them well, you can see your site rebuilt first with your work laid out properly.