What to photograph for a contents insurance claim

The advice people usually get is "walk around your house filming everything". It is better than nothing, and it is much weaker evidence than most people believe.

A video pan of a living room proves a television existed. It does not prove which model, what condition it was in, or that it was yours. Those are the three things a claim turns on.

The four photographs that matter

For anything worth claiming, take four:

1. The item in place. Establishes it was in your home, in that room.
2. The item close up. Shows condition — scratches, wear, or the lack of it.
3. The label, serial number or maker's mark. This is the one people skip and the one that settles arguments about model and specification.
4. The receipt, box or manual if you still have it. Photograph it now; it will not survive the loft.

Four pictures sounds like a lot until you realise it applies to maybe thirty items in an average house, not three hundred.

What the adjuster is actually checking

An adjuster is not trying to catch you out. They are trying to answer three questions with evidence, and if you have not supplied it they have to estimate, which almost always lands lower than reality.

• Did you own it? Photographs in your home, receipts, packaging.
• What exactly was it? Model numbers turn "a laptop" into a specific laptop with a specific replacement cost. The gap between those two figures is usually hundreds.
• What condition was it in? A three year old sofa in good condition and a three year old sofa with a torn arm settle differently.

Photograph the serial number even when it feels excessive

Serial numbers are the single highest-value thing you can record, and they are almost impossible to recover after a loss. They live in awkward places:

• Televisions: back panel, usually near the ports
• Laptops: underside, or under the battery
• Appliances: inside the door frame, or behind the kickplate
• Power tools: on the motor housing, often under a sticker
• Bicycles: stamped into the frame under the bottom bracket

Take the photograph close enough to read it. A blurred serial is the same as no serial.

Do it before you need it

Every one of these photographs has to exist before the fire, the flood or the burglary. This is obvious and it is still the reason most claims are underpaid — the evidence was always going to be taken "at some point".

If you do nothing else, do one evening of work:

• Electronics, with serial numbers
• Jewellery and watches, laid out on a plain background
• Tools
• Anything inherited or collected
• The contents of the garage, which is where the expensive, forgettable things live

Store the photographs somewhere the fire will not reach

A photo of your house on a phone that was in the house is not evidence. Whatever you use has to be somewhere else — cloud storage, an emailed archive, a drive at a relative's house.

This is worth saying plainly because it is the most common failure: people take good photographs and lose them alongside the things they photographed.

Keep the record with the item, not in a folder

The other common failure is organisational. A thousand photographs in a camera roll is not an inventory; nobody is going to sort them at the worst moment of their year.

Attach each photograph to the item it shows, with its replacement cost and where it lives. That is exactly what Waoo Storage does — an item holds as many photographs as you want, along with what it would cost to replace, and the whole lot exports to a spreadsheet you can hand to a loss adjuster.

However you do it, the test is simple: could somebody else, holding only your records, work out what you lost? If yes, you are covered. If no, you have a camera roll.

If you are not sure how much cover you should have in the first place, that is a separate calculation worth doing properly.