Lights, camera and cash in

Hiring out your home as a shoot location can be a rewarding side hustle, but do you have the right space and mindset to make a go of it

- Kate Jacobs

Using your home as a shoot location can be lucrative, and occasionally glamorous, too. As mortgage rates, energy bills and the cost of everything rises there’s an undeniable temptation to make some cash out of your home and renting it out as a shoot location could make you as much as £2,500 per day, with rates in London typically about £750-£1,000. But you’ll need a certain type of property and outlook for it to work.

A quick browse of London location agency websites, such as Fresh Locations and 1st Option, shows a wide range of properties, from minimalist loft apartments to authentic-looking family homes, but unmodernised properties and even total wrecks can be surprisingly popular. Directors might ask for “texture”, which means lived in or wornout looking homes. Great news for anyone living in a Seventies time warp while saving for a renovation.

 ADDING TO THE RENOVATION FUND

While many location homes are stylish but neutral, they certainly do not have to be, as Kentaro Poteliakhoff ’s four-bedroom Victorian house in Lower Clapton shows. The owner of Hackney interiors shop Rooms (@rooms_e5), Poteliakhoff was once the assistant to legendary fashion stylist Isabella Blow and has created a joy-filled celebration of maximalism that appeals to clients looking for a level of personality hard to recreate for a one-off shoot.

“I tend to get a lot of editorial jobs — Vogue India, Wonderland and Hia Magazine — and fashion shoots for brands including Monki, Lazy Oaf and Sister Jane,” says Poteliakhoff, who listed ‘Villa des Narcisses’ (@villadesnarcisses), as he playfully calls it, for location work once it was finished to his satisfaction.