FoxiWhat to Put on Your Trades Website Portfolio Page
A trades portfolio page has one job: let a stranger decide, in under a minute, whether you're capable of the work they need done. That means the photos on it matter more than almost anything else on the site, and it means most trades portfolios are trying to show too much, not too little.
Choosing which jobs to feature
Feature the jobs that look like the work you want more of, not necessarily your biggest or most complicated project. If most of your enquiries are kitchen fits, a portfolio dominated by one showcase extension doesn't help a kitchen customer picture their own job. Pick a handful of jobs that represent the range and scale of work you actually want to be hired for.
Recency matters too. A portfolio full of five-year-old photos, even good ones, signals that nothing much has happened since. Rotating in recent work, even modest jobs, shows you're active and keeps the page honest about what you're doing now.
How many photos per job
Three to six photos per job is usually enough: one wide shot that establishes the space, one or two detail shots of the work itself, and a before if you have one. More than that and visitors start skimming past rather than looking closely at any of them.
Resist the urge to include every angle you shot. A portfolio is a curated set, not an archive. If two photos show roughly the same thing, keep the better one and drop the other.
- One wide establishing shot of the space
- One or two close detail shots of the finished work
- A before photo if you have a matched one
- Skip near-duplicate angles
Consistency across the page
A portfolio page reads as more professional when every job is presented the same way: same photo count, same crop ratio, same caption style. Inconsistency, one job with eight photos and a paragraph of text, the next with a single blurry shot, makes the stronger jobs look like exceptions rather than the standard.
This is often more about editing discipline than photography skill. If lighting varies wildly from job to job because some were shot on a sunny afternoon and others on a grey morning, the page feels disjointed even if every individual photo is fine. Evening out lighting and colour across your photo set, so nothing looks dramatically brighter or flatter than its neighbours, is worth doing before you publish.
Getting each photo portfolio-ready
Not every job photo you take is one you'd want to publish straight away. Tools left in the frame, a van parked in the background, flat light from an overcast day, these are common and fixable. Foxi AI's portfolio hero grade look is built for this: it evens out lighting and tone so photos from different jobs and different weather sit together consistently on one page, and the site cleanup look clears leftover tools and clutter from a shot. Both are everyday edits, about 5 credits each, done in under a minute.
The edit should only ever tidy what the camera saw, not change what was built. A portfolio photo is a claim about the standard of work a new client can expect, so what's shown has to be the job as completed.
Where the portfolio sits on your site
Put the portfolio somewhere a visitor finds without hunting, ideally one click from the homepage, and keep the most representative jobs near the top since most visitors won't scroll through everything. A page that's easy to browse on a phone matters as much as the photos themselves; check how it looks on a small screen before you call it finished.
Frequently asked
How often should I update my portfolio?
Whenever you finish a job worth showing, ideally every few weeks if you're working regularly. A page that hasn't changed in a year reads as inactive even if you're busy.
Should I show my worst as well as my best work?
No. A portfolio is a curated selection of your best representative work, not a full record. Keep the complete job history for references and invoicing, not the public page.
What's the ideal number of jobs to feature?
Enough to show range without overwhelming a visitor, often somewhere between six and twelve well-chosen jobs beats thirty inconsistent ones.
Can I mix phone photos and better camera shots on the same page?
Yes, as long as the lighting and tone are evened out across them so the quality difference isn't jarring. An editing pass that evens tone across a set does more for a mixed-source portfolio than reshooting everything on the same camera.
Stage a whole listing at once
Upload the photos you already took. Pick a style. Get the furnished set back in minutes — same rooms, same angles, nothing structural moved, filed under the address.