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Sun Path and Virtual Staging: The Light and Layout Photos Can't Show
A listing photo shows a room as the camera found it, which leaves a buyer two questions to answer alone: what the room could be used for, and when it gets the sun. In Giraffe360, Virtual staging answers the first on the still photos, and Sun path answers the second in the 3D floor plan, from sunrise to sunset on the day the property was captured.
What a Spare Room Could Become
A spare room with no settled use, empty or holding the seller's spare furniture, could be an office, a nursery or a guest bedroom, and its photo leaves the choice to the buyer. Virtual staging furnishes an empty room in a photo or restyles a furnished one, and it can run twice on the same photo, so the room appears once as a home office and once as a child's bedroom.
It sits in Content Studio. Open the project's Still photos, open a photo's menu and select AI enhance, then choose Virtual staging and a style: Modern, Scandinavian, Luxury, Industrial, Bohemian, Budget, Families, Outdoor or Custom. With Custom you describe the room yourself, in up to 1,000 characters, and the Help Centre suggests the room type first, then the design style, the main pieces of furniture and the mood or lighting. For the office that might be a home office in a Scandinavian style, with a desk, a chair and open shelves, in soft daylight.
Check the credit cost shown, select Enhance, and compare the versions that come back with the base image; Fast mode returns up to three. Confirm the one to keep and select Save & close, and the new photo is in Still photos under AI enhanced. A second run with a child's bedroom described gives the other version of the same room.
Two other tools in AI enhance change what is already in the room. Remove objects shows it bare: Remove all furniture takes out the seller's furniture, Declutter clears the smaller things, and Custom removes what you name; for Declutter, the editor suggests Pro mode for more accurate results. Place objects adds a single item, such as a plant or a lamp, at a pin you drop on the photo.
What Staging Doesn't Touch
Each AI version is saved as a new photo, and the original stays unchanged in the Originals tab. Staging stays in the stills too: neither the virtual tour nor the 3D floor plan changes, since both come from the capture itself, so a buyer who opens them after the staged office sees the room as it is.
The AI can change more than the furniture. The Help Centre warns that it may alter the shape or look of windows, doors and walls, and add or remove things that were never in the room, so compare every version with the base image before confirming one. AI-enhanced photos carry a disclosure watermark, Digitally Altered by default, and many MLSs want a staged photo labelled, with the original beside it.
Where the Sun Falls Through the Day
A photo can't settle the light either, since it shows the room at one moment. Buyers weigh it all the same: in a 2026 Redfin survey run by Ipsos among 1,005 US residents, 44% said they would choose a smaller home with more sunlight over a larger one with less, against 24% who would take the larger, dimmer home, and 11% called sunlight non-negotiable.
Sun path is a layer of the 3D floor plan. It places the sun from the project's GPS coordinates and the property's compass orientation, and simulates its light and shadow across the rooms between sunrise and sunset. Moving through the day, a buyer can see that one room takes the morning sun while another stays in shade until the afternoon, so the morning room suits the office and the shaded one a bedroom for someone who sleeps late.
Buyers see the layer wherever the 3D floor plan goes: its shared link, which opens in a browser without an account, and the property website.
The Day the Sun Path Shows
Sun path simulates one day, the day of the capture, and the player shows its date beside it. A buyer looking at it in another season can see which day the light belongs to.
The sun path also has to be generated before anyone can see it. Turning the layer on doesn't create it: until the project's sun path is generated, with Generate sun path on the project's 3D Floor plan card, viewers don't get the layer. Once it exists, someone with permission to edit the project turns it on:
- Open the project, find the 3D Floor plan card, open its menu and select Edit.
- In Layers, under Displayed layers, turn on Sun path.
- To have the floor plan open on the sun, choose Sun path as the Default layer.
- Check the preview, then select Save & close.
At least one layer has to stay on. To switch Sun path on for every new project in a workspace, the same choices are in Manage workspace, under Presets and 3D Floor plan, where a Workspace Manager, Organisation Admin or Organisation Manager sets them; projects that already exist keep their own settings.
One Spare Room, Both Answers
Both tools start from the same visit with a Giraffe360 camera: the still photos that get staged and the 3D floor plan that carries the sun. Put together, the spare room that takes the morning sun appears in the listing staged as an office, beside its original, and the buyer can open the 3D floor plan and watch the light reach it.
For a photographer, that is two more things to hand the agent from files already delivered. The staged photos go into the listing with their originals, while the link to the 3D floor plan can go into the listing, an email or the property website.
Frequently asked questions
No. Giraffe360's Virtual staging works on still photos alone, so each panorama in the virtual tour keeps the room as the camera captured it.
See a spare room staged and lit
In a demo you see a spare room staged in a still photo and the sun crossing it in a 3D floor plan, both from one capture.
