Home Inventory Photos for Insurance: A Room-by-Room Guide

Walk through every room, including closets, the basement, and the garage, and take a wide photo or short video of each. Then photograph your valuable items one by one, with a close-up of the brand, model, and serial number, and a photo of the receipt if you have it. Store copies somewhere other than your home, like cloud storage or a relative's house, and update the inventory once a year. The whole first pass takes an afternoon.

After a fire, flood, or burglary, your insurer will ask you for a list of what you lost. Most people find this surprisingly hard. You know you owned a lot of things, but standing in a damaged house, you can't remember what was in the hall closet, what brand the TV was, or how many coats you had.

A photo inventory, made before anything happens, answers those questions for you.

Why a home inventory matters

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), the organization of state insurance regulators in the U.S., puts it simply: the more detail you can provide, the easier it will be for your insurance company to evaluate your loss. Their advice for creating one is to go through every room, write down and take pictures or videos of everything in it, and do it before a disaster strikes.

Photos help in two ways. They prove you owned something, and they show what it was, which matters when the payout depends on the model, the brand, and the condition.

Start with the five-minute version

If you only do one thing, do this. The NAIC says that if you don't have time to create a full inventory, you should quickly videotape or photograph every room.

Walk through your home and, in each room:

• Take a wide photo from the doorway and one from the opposite corner.
• Open the closets and cabinets and take a photo of what is inside.
• Include the basement, attic, garage, and any shed or storage unit.

A slow video, where you narrate what you're filming ("this is the living room, that is a 65-inch Samsung TV bought in 2024"), is quick and captures a lot. Photos are better for details you need to read later, like serial numbers.

This first pass covers you even if you never get to the detailed version.

Then the detailed version, room by room

The NAIC suggests including as much information as possible about your belongings: brand name, the price you paid, date of purchase, make and model, and serial numbers, with photos of each item and any receipts. Here is where to focus in each room:

Room	What to photograph individually
Living room	TV and sound system, game consoles, furniture, rugs, art, lamps
Kitchen	Large appliances, small appliances, dishes and cookware (one photo per cabinet)
Bedrooms	Furniture, mattresses, clothes (one photo per rack or drawer), shoes, jewelry
Office	Computers, monitors, printers, cameras, other electronics
Bathrooms	Cabinet contents, anything expensive like hair tools
Garage and shed	Tools, bikes, sports gear, lawn equipment, anything stored in boxes
Everywhere	Collectibles, instruments, antiques, and anything with a serial number

For each valuable item, take two photos:

1. The whole item, clearly lit, so its condition is visible.
2. The label: the sticker or plate with the brand, model, and serial number, usually on the back or bottom. Make sure the numbers are sharp and readable when you zoom in.

The NAIC specifically mentions valuable items like antiques, electronics, jewelry, collectibles, and guns. For jewelry and art, also photograph any appraisal documents. Your insurer may require separate coverage for high-value items, so it's worth asking.

Don't skip the ordinary things

It's easy to photograph the TV and forget the drawers. But clothes, shoes, towels, bedding, kitchenware, and books add up to a lot of money when you have to replace all of them at once. The NAIC reminds people to go through all of their drawers and closets and not to forget the garage.

You don't need a photo of every sock. One photo of each open drawer, each closet rail, and each shelf is enough to show what was there.

Receipts and dates

A photo of a receipt next to the item it belongs to connects the two in a single image. Keep receipts for big purchases and repairs too. The NAIC recommends keeping receipts with your inventory for repairs and new items you buy.

The date matters as well. Every photo your phone takes has the date stored in its metadata, which you can check with an EXIF viewer. If you want the date to be visible on the image itself, where nobody can miss it, a timestamp camera like the TimeStamp Camera app prints the date, time, and address on each photo as you take it. For an inventory, that shows both when you owned something and that it was at your address.

Put it together in one place

Hundreds of loose photos are hard to hand to an adjuster. Two simple ways to organize them:

• One folder per room, with a short text file listing the valuable items and their serial numbers.
• One PDF per room, made with a tool like photo to PDF or the photo report generator, both of which run in your browser without uploading your photos anywhere.

The NAIC also has a free Home Inventory app for iPhone and Android, which lets you take photos of your belongings, group them by room or category, scan barcodes, and export the inventory at any time.

Store it away from your home

This is the step people forget, and it's the one that matters most. An inventory stored only on a laptop in the house can burn with the house.

The NAIC recommends keeping backups somewhere besides your home, such as your workplace, a safe deposit box, a relative's house, or online, so you can reach them even if you have to evacuate. Cloud storage is the easiest option for most people. Store a copy of your insurance policy in the same place.

Keep it current

The NAIC recommends reviewing and updating your inventory once a year, including the photos and videos, and adding new items when you buy them. A good habit: when you buy something valuable, photograph it and its serial number before you throw away the box.

If something has already happened

If you're making a claim and never made an inventory, you can still build one. The NAIC suggests working from memory and looking through photos on your phone, or photos from family and friends, taken in your home. Old birthday photos, holiday photos, and videos often show rooms, furniture, and electronics in the background.

Then, for the claim itself: make a list of all your damaged property, take photos and videos of the damage, and contact your insurer with your policy number. The time you have to report a claim varies by state, so don't wait.

Checklist

• Wide photo or video of every room, plus closets, basement, attic, garage.
• Valuable items one by one, with a close-up of the serial number.
• Receipts and appraisals photographed next to their items.
• One photo per open drawer, closet rail, and shelf.
• Organized by room, as folders or PDFs.
• A copy stored outside your home, with your insurance policy.
• Reviewed once a year and after big purchases.

Sources: National Association of Insurance Commissioners, "Home Inventory," "Consumer Insight: Disaster Preparedness," "How to Prepare Ahead of Extreme Weather," and "What You Need to Know When Filing a Homeowners Claim."