How Many Photos Should a Property Listing Have? Rightmove and Zoopla Specs Explained

Zoopla recommends 15 or more photos for sales listings and 6 to 10 for lettings listings. Images should be uploaded as JPEGs in a 3:2 landscape ratio, with 1024 x 683 pixels widely cited as the optimum size for Rightmove. Video cannot be uploaded directly to Zoopla at all: it has to be hosted on an approved player such as YouTube or Vimeo and embedded, which is the single most common reason a property video fails to appear on a listing. This guide covers the photo counts, image dimensions, video rules, and floor plan specs that actually affect how a listing performs.

How many photos should a property listing have?

Zoopla’s own guidance to member agents is specific: 15 or more photos for a sales listing, and 6 to 10 for a lettings listing. Zoopla states directly that too few photos is a deterrent for buyers, and that these numbers correlate with a higher number of search clicks.

The split between sales and lettings is deliberate and worth understanding. A buyer is making the largest purchase of their life and wants to inspect everything before committing to a viewing. A renter is making a faster, lower-stakes decision and tends to scan rather than study. More images help a sales listing; too many can dilute a lettings listing.

Rightmove guidance is less prescriptive publicly, and figures cited across the industry vary between roughly 7 and 30 images. In practice, matching Zoopla’s numbers works well for both portals, since most agencies push the same image set to both.

Two caveats that matter more than the headline number.

Property size sets the ceiling. Zoopla makes this point explicitly: you can only show so many photos of a studio flat compared with a five-bedroom house. Padding a small flat’s listing to hit 15 images means including weak shots, and a weak image in position four does more damage than a missing image in position twelve.

Quality outranks quantity. Fifteen strong images beat twenty-five where eight are filler. If you cannot fill the count with images you would be happy to lead with, stop at the point where quality drops.

What image size do Rightmove and Zoopla want?

Both portals display listing images in a 3:2 landscape ratio. That single fact matters more than any pixel dimension, because an image shot or cropped to a different ratio will be cropped automatically at upload, and the crop is not always where you would have chosen.

The figures below are widely used across the industry. Rightmove’s published technical documentation is not frequently updated, so treat these as reliable working values rather than guaranteed current specification, and confirm with your portal account manager if a listing is high value.

A common and avoidable mistake: uploading enormous files straight from the camera. Rightmove displays images at around 620 x 414 pixels, and anything larger is resized down on upload. A 12MB file does not produce a better listing image than a properly prepared 800KB one. It just uploads slowly and, on some feed systems, fails silently.

The opposite error is worse. An image below the minimum dimensions will look soft on a modern display, and the portal will not upscale it for you. If a photographer supplies web-sized files only, ask for a set at 1024 x 683 or larger.

Why is my property video not showing on Zoopla?

This is the most common technical failure in property listing marketing, and it catches out agents who have paid for professional video.

Zoopla does not accept direct video uploads. Video has to be hosted elsewhere and embedded via a link. Only approved players are embedded in the listing page itself.

Zoopla’s current approved list is:

• YouTube

• Vimeo

• Matterport

• Vistabee

• Vieweet

• Audio Agent

• Home Viewpoint Property Movie Tours

  
  

Video hosted anywhere else still appears, but only buried in the More information section under Additional links, and it opens in a new window rather than playing in the listing. That is a large drop in visibility for the same production cost.

Three specific traps account for most failures:

YouTube Shorts are not accepted. Zoopla states this explicitly. If your videographer delivers a vertical social cut and it gets uploaded to YouTube as a Short, it will not embed. Upload the landscape version as a standard YouTube video and keep the Short for Instagram and TikTok.

YouTube embedding has to be switched on. In the YouTube account, under the video’s advanced settings, Allow embedding must be ticked. It usually is by default, but agencies with locked-down channel settings often find it is not.

Vimeo needs Zoopla’s domains whitelisted. On Vimeo Plus or Pro, domain-level privacy blocks embedding unless you add the permitted domains. In the video’s Settings, under the Privacy tab, in the “where can this video be embedded?” section, add both www.zoopla.co.uk and www.primelocation.com. Miss this and the video simply will not play.

One further Vimeo detail worth knowing, because the error message is unhelpful. If you see “the embed code for this video is not valid”, the URL format is wrong. Zoopla needs the player URL, not the share URL:

• Correct: https://player.vimeo.com/video/134122888

• Incorrect: https://vimeo.com/134122888/1d3e0d8b1b

Finally, note that embedded video is free on Zoopla, but the prominent video icon and call to action on the search results page requires the listing to be upgraded to a Premium Listing. The video will still embed on the listing page without it. You are paying for visibility in search, not for the embed itself.

What are the floor plan requirements?

Floor plans are handled separately from photography and have their own dimensions. Widely cited Rightmove values are a maximum of 2025 x 2025 pixels, a minimum of 600 x 600, and 900 x 900 as the recommended upload size. Unlike listing photos, floor plans are square rather than 3:2.

Zoopla treats floor plans as a distinct listing asset and encourages their use. The reason is straightforward: a floor plan answers the question photographs cannot, which is how the rooms relate to each other. Listings without one generate avoidable enquiries asking for exactly that.

Keep floor plans legible at thumbnail size. A plan crammed with dimensions in six-point type is unreadable on a phone, which is where most property browsing happens.

What order should listing photos go in?

Ordering is the most under-used lever in listing presentation, and it costs nothing to change.

The first image is doing almost all the work. It is the thumbnail in search results, the map pin preview, and the image that appears in the “similar properties” widget on other listings. If it does not earn the click, nothing else in the listing gets seen.

A reliable running order for a sales listing:

• Image 1: the strongest single shot. Usually the main reception room or the front elevation if the exterior is the property’s best feature

• Images 2 to 4: the principal living spaces, in the order a visitor would walk through them

• Images 5 to 8: kitchen, then bedrooms in descending size order

• Images 9 to 12: bathrooms, garden or outdoor space, and any standout feature such as a roof terrace or home office

• Remaining images: detail shots, secondary spaces, and context

• Final image: the floor plan, if it is not held in the dedicated floor plan slot

  
  

Zoopla also recommends rotating the photo order on listings that have been live for a while. Reordering refreshes how the property appears in search results and can revive engagement on a listing that has gone quiet, without a price reduction. It takes two minutes and is free.

For guidance on preparing the property itself before the shoot, see our property shoot day checklist.

Frequently asked questions

How many photos should a property listing have?

Zoopla recommends 15 or more photos for sales listings and 6 to 10 for lettings listings. Rightmove guidance is less prescriptive, with industry figures ranging from roughly 7 to 30. Property size sets a practical ceiling: a studio flat cannot support the same image count as a five-bedroom house, and padding a listing with weak shots does more harm than stopping at a smaller number of strong ones.

What size should property photos be for Rightmove?

1024 x 683 pixels is the widely cited optimum, in a 3:2 landscape ratio, saved as JPEG and ideally under 1MB per file. The minimum is around 656 x 437 pixels. Rightmove displays images at approximately 620 x 414 pixels and resizes larger uploads down, so very large files offer no quality benefit. Confirm current specification with your portal account manager for high-value listings.

Can you upload a video directly to Zoopla?

No. Zoopla does not accept direct video uploads. Video must be hosted on an approved player and embedded via a link. Approved players are YouTube, Vimeo, Matterport, Vistabee, Vieweet, Audio Agent, and Home Viewpoint Property Movie Tours. Video hosted elsewhere still appears on the listing but only under Additional links in the More information section, opening in a new window rather than playing in the page.

Why is my Vimeo video not playing on Zoopla?

Two likely causes. First, Vimeo Plus and Pro accounts use domain-level privacy, which blocks embedding until you whitelist the destination. In the video’s Settings, under Privacy, add www.zoopla.co.uk and www.primelocation.com to the list of domains where the video can be embedded. Second, check the URL format: Zoopla requires the player URL (player.vimeo.com/video/ID) rather than the share URL (vimeo.com/ID/hash). The wrong format produces an “embed code is not valid” error.

Do YouTube Shorts work on Zoopla listings?

No. Zoopla explicitly excludes YouTube Shorts from its approved embed formats. If you have a vertical social cut of a property video, upload the landscape version to YouTube as a standard video for the listing embed, and keep the vertical cut for Instagram Reels and TikTok. A good videographer will supply both formats from the same shoot.

Does adding video to a listing cost extra on Zoopla?

Embedding the video itself is free. What costs extra is the enhanced display: to get the video icon and call to action showing on the search results page, the listing must be upgraded to a Premium Listing. Without the upgrade, the video still embeds and plays on the listing page, it is simply less visible to people scrolling search results.

Should photos be different sizes for Rightmove and Zoopla?

In practice, no. Both portals display in 3:2 landscape, so a single well-prepared image set at 1024 x 683 pixels works for both, which is how most agency feed systems handle it anyway. The one asset that differs is the floor plan, which is square rather than 3:2 and should be prepared separately at around 900 x 900 pixels.