House Style for Vehicle Photos: A Setup Guide for Car Dealers

Every dealer I have ever met has a house style, whether they have thought about it or not.

It is in the way you park cars on the front row. Whether you angle them or square them up. Whether the plates are on. Whether there is a board in the window. You made those decisions once, years ago, and now they just happen.

Photography is the one place where that instinct usually does not carry over. The car gets photographed wherever it is standing, in whatever light there is, and the result is that the most-seen part of your business is also the least consistent part of it.

A house style for photos fixes that in the same way it does on the forecourt: you decide once, and then it happens by itself. In Photo Studio that saved decision is called a look. This post is about setting a good one up.

What a look is made of

A look is a saved combination of six things:

The background. Chosen from a library of scenes.
Placement. Where the vehicle sits on the background and how large it appears.
Shadow. What the vehicle casts on the ground beneath it.
Reflection. How much of the vehicle bounces back off the floor.
Light matching. How strongly the vehicle’s lighting is pulled towards the lighting of the scene.
Your logo. Whether it is stamped on the photo, and where.

Now the useful bit: you almost certainly only need to think about the first one and the last one.

Everything between placement and light matching is already set to whatever suits the background you chose. A look that nobody adjusts still comes out right. The finer controls exist for dealers who want to get specific, and they are folded out of the way for everyone else.

So read the sections below in order of how much they will actually change your life: background first, logo second, the rest only if you are curious.

Choosing a background that suits your stock

This is ninety per cent of the decision, so give it a few minutes rather than picking the first one that looks nice.

Match the setting to the money. A polished showroom floor under a £3,000 Corsa reads as odd. A gritty street scene under a £45,000 prestige car reads as careless. Neither is wrong exactly, but both create a small friction the buyer cannot name. Pick the setting a customer would expect to find that car in.

Plainer wins at scale. This is the mistake I see most often. A dramatic background looks superb on one hero image and exhausting across a grid of forty thumbnails. When forty cars share a busy scene, the eye stops seeing the cars. Choose the version you would be happy looking at forty times, not the version that wins on its own.

Think about your colours. A dark background swallows black and navy cars. A very light one washes out silver and white. If most of your stock is one end of that range, favour a background with contrast against it. If your stock is mixed, mid-tone backgrounds are the safe bet.

Check it against your website. Your photos will appear inside your site’s design, next to your brand colour, on your background. A scene that looks great in isolation can clash badly once it is sitting on your actual stock page. Try it there before you commit.

The logo question

You can stamp your logo on every photo. Whether you should depends on where your photos end up.

Reasons to. Your stock gets syndicated to marketplaces and social, and images travel further than you think. A logo means a screenshot still points back to you. It also nudges buyers who found you on a marketplace towards recognising you when they land on your own site.

Reasons not to. A logo that is too large, too central, or sitting over the bodywork makes a photo look like an advert rather than a car. Buyers are trying to see the vehicle. Anything between them and it is a cost.

If you do use one, keep it small, keep it in a corner, and keep it off the car. Then look at it on a phone, because that is where most people will see it, and a logo that looks discreet on a monitor can dominate a thumbnail.

The controls you probably will not touch

For completeness, here is what the rest of it does and when it is worth adjusting.

Placement and size. Governs how much of the frame the vehicle fills and where it sits. The default keeps the vehicle comfortably framed with the background visible around it. Worth adjusting only if you feel your cars look too small or too cramped once you see them on your own site.

Shadow. A vehicle with no shadow looks like it is hovering. The shadow is what makes it sit on the ground. The default is set to match the light in the scene, which is why you rarely need to touch it. If you do, err on the side of subtle. Heavy shadows look staged.

Reflection. Relevant on hard, polished surfaces like showroom floors and much less so on tarmac or gravel. Again, matched to the background by default. A little reflection sells the surface; a lot of it looks like a car advert from 2007.

Light matching. This pulls the vehicle’s lighting towards the lighting of the scene, so a car shot on a flat grey morning does not look pasted onto a bright afternoon. Turn it up if your results look cut-out, and down if colours are shifting further from the car’s real paint than you are comfortable with. Accuracy of the paint colour matters more than a perfect blend, because the buyer is going to see the real car eventually.

Should you have more than one look?

Usually one is enough, and one is better than three because consistency is the entire point.

Two exceptions are worth considering.

Commercials and cars. If you stock vans and pickups alongside cars, they may suit a different setting. A Transit on a polished showroom floor looks stranger than a Transit on a clean yard. Two looks, one for each side of the business, is reasonable.

A prestige line. If you have a distinct upper tier of stock and you present it differently already, giving it its own look follows the same logic.

Beyond that, resist. A dealer with five looks has no house style, they have five inconsistent stock pages sharing a domain.

Setting it up without wasting your allowance

A sensible order to work in.

Pick five representative cars. Your cheapest, something mid-range, your dearest, a van or estate if you stock them, and something white or black. These five will surface every issue you are going to hit.

Prepare them once. Preparation is the part that counts against your monthly allowance. Do it on these five and no more, at this stage.

Now try as many looks as you like. Once a photo has been prepared, restyling it is free, however often you do it. This is why the five-car test costs almost nothing. Try three or four backgrounds, look at each on your live site rather than in the editor, and pick.

Save it, name it, roll it out. Give the look a name you will recognise in six months. Then run it across your stock.

Apply it as stock arrives. From here the house style maintains itself. Every car that comes in gets the same treatment as it is listed, which is the whole return on the hour you spent choosing.

Frequently asked questions

How many looks should I have?

One, for most dealers. Consider a second only if you stock commercials alongside cars, or run a distinct prestige line.

Can I change my house style later?

Yes, and it costs nothing on photos that have already been prepared. If you decide in six months that a different background suits you better, you can restyle your existing stock without using your allowance again.

Will my logo appear on marketplace listings?

If you stamp it on the photo, it travels with the image wherever the image goes. That is usually the reason to use one. Keep it small and cornered so it does not compete with the vehicle.

Do I have to set the shadow and reflection myself?

No. They are set to suit whichever background you pick. Most dealers never open those controls.

What if a car comes out looking wrong?

Doubtful results are flagged in the review screen so you can look at those specifically. Nothing is published until you approve it, and originals are kept so you can revert anything at any time.

Where do I set this up?

Photo Studio sits inside the dealer management system, alongside your stock. There is also an Edit in Photo Studio button on any vehicle’s photos if you want to work on one car.

More from the Vehiso blog

Dealer Tips Product Vehicle preparation Car dealer websites

How to Set Up a House Style for Your Vehicle Photos