May I publish photos of a finished kitchen inside a private flat?

Only with the customer's agreement. Not because of copyright, but because a flat is private space and you are only photographing there because someone let you in. Get the release in writing at the handover and the question is settled for good.

Does this apply to outdoor shots as well, for instance a newly built garden?

Shot from the street the situation is easier, because the exception for works on publicly accessible ground can apply. In practice you are almost always standing in the garden itself while shooting, which is private ground, and then you need the owner's agreement. Just ask; it takes half a minute.

I have old project photos with no release. Delete them or ask?

Ask. A short email with the photos attached and one clear yes or no question costs you five minutes and is the only way to still get something out of those photos. The wording is in this article. If no answer comes, or the answer is no, the photos stay in the drawer.

Does a release for the website also cover Instagram?

Only if it says so. General consent does not cover uses that were not foreseen when it was given. That is why the sheet lists the channels one by one: website, Google Business Profile, social media, printed material. Add a channel later and you ask again for that one.

A photo release for customer projects: one sheet to take on site · Guide

The sheet first

Here is the text this article is about. Copy it, drop it into a document, add your logo, print two copies. One stays with the customer, one comes back to the workshop.

Photo release

Property and address: … Date: …

I agree that … (the company) may photograph the work carried out for me and show those photos: on its own website, in its Google Business Profile, on its social media channels and in printed material.

The location may be named as: ☐ municipality ☐ region or canton only ☐ not at all.

People in the photos: ☐ none ☐ yes, and they have agreed.

I can withdraw this release at any time. The company will then take the photos off its own channels. Material already printed and posts already shared by others cannot be recalled.

Place and date … Customer signature … Company signature …

Most trade project galleries are not empty because the work has nothing to show. They are empty because nobody asked at the handover, and three months later nobody picks up the phone. One signed line at the right moment fixes that.

Which is why the important part is not the wording but the routine. The sheet belongs in the folder the fitter or the foreman takes to the handover, not in a binder back at the office. Standing in front of the finished job is the easiest moment there is: the customer can see what turned out well, and you are right there.

This is a practical aid, not a vetted contract template, and I am not a lawyer. Difficult cases belong with a professional. For the ordinary case, a fitted kitchen, a built-in wardrobe, a finished garden, this sheet does its job.

Why the release is needed at all

Three separate things sit on top of each other here, and they get mixed up constantly. Kept apart they are easy to follow.

Privacy. A finished interior sits in a private flat, and you are only there because someone let you in. That is the real reason for the release: not copyright, but the customer’s privacy and their right over their own property. Whoever lets you onto their land or into their home can also forbid photography there.

Swiss copyright law does have an exception for works permanently situated on or at publicly accessible ground; those may be depicted, and the depiction may be distributed. That is Art. 27 of the Copyright Act (SR 231.1). Inside a flat it does not apply: CCdigitallaw, a project run by the eLearning Lab of the Università della Svizzera italiana, states in German that «Werke innerhalb von Gebäuden gelten dagegen nicht als allgemein zugänglich und fallen daher nicht unter diese Ausnahmeregelung», meaning works inside buildings do not count as publicly accessible and fall outside the exception.

What matters, though, is what that exception is for: it limits somebody else’s copyright. With a kitchen you drew and built yourself there is no third-party right for an exception to overcome in the first place. The exception only counts where somebody else’s work is involved, and that is the third point.

The people. The Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, in its SME blog post «Fotos für Ihr KMU: So machen Sie es richtig» of 3 March 2021, puts it this way: «In aller Regel kommt das Persönlichkeitsrecht ins Spiel, sobald eine Person erkennbar aufgenommen wird. Dann braucht es bereits für die Aufnahme selber eine Einwilligung und dann auch für die Verwendung.» In substance: personality rights come into play as soon as a person is photographed recognisably, and then consent is needed for taking the photo in the first place and again for using it. Two permissions, not one. The Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner adds on its page Umgang mit Fotos that photos count as personal data once the people shown are recognisable. In daily practice that leads to a simple conclusion: the easiest clean reference photo is one with nobody in it.

Someone else’s design. Works of architecture can be protected by copyright, and CCdigitallaw expressly counts interior architecture among them. Protection only applies to what has individual character, though; purely craft work is not enough according to the same source. This becomes relevant when an architect or interior designer planned the room and your photo mainly shows that design rather than your own detail. In that case ask there too. For a kitchen front you drew and built yourself the question does not arise.

When you do not have to ask

The honest counterpart, because otherwise the impression sticks that a trade business is no longer allowed to photograph anything. That is not the case.

Your own workshop. Your premises, your machines, your people working on the carcass. As long as no outside person is recognisable and no customer property is in shot, that is your business.
Your own showroom. The display piece, the kitchen that belongs to nobody yet. Photograph as much as you can here, before delivery.
Detail shots with no context. A mitre, a drawer runner, a joint, an edge. No room, no address, no person, nothing that points back to the customer.

Two caveats belong with that, otherwise it turns into a free pass. First, if the customer has explicitly said no photos, none of these exceptions help. Second, the property owner’s right stands. Whoever lets you onto their land can also forbid photography there. When in doubt, ask; it takes thirty seconds and saves every later argument.

The worksheet line by line

Why each line is on the sheet, briefly. If you want to cut something, you will at least know what you are cutting.

Line	Why it is there
Property, address, date	So it is later unambiguous which photos are meant. Without it you hold a release for something unspecified.
What gets photographed	”The work carried out for me” rather than “photos in my flat”. The customer should see that this is about your work, not about their home.
Where it may appear	Website, Google Business Profile, social media, print. Listed one by one, because consent is bound to the purpose it was given for. The FDPIC requires that the people concerned «über den Kontext der Veröffentlichung informiert werden», that is, be informed about the context of publication.
Whether the location may be named	The location is the detail the value of the reference later hangs on. Some customers still do not want their municipality next to photos of their flat. Three tick boxes settle it.
People yes or no	This forces the fitter to think about it at the moment of shooting. That is the real purpose of the line; the tick does not replace consent from the people shown.
Withdrawal and what it achieves	The FDPIC states: «Eine einmal erteilte Einwilligung kann grundsätzlich jederzeit zurückgezogen werden, mit dem Resultat, dass auch die Veröffentlichung ab diesem Zeitpunkt nicht mehr möglich ist.» Consent can in principle be withdrawn at any time, and publication then has to stop. Honesty means also saying what withdrawal cannot reach, namely material already printed.
Signature from both sides	The IPI recommends writing explicitly: «Aus Beweisgründen sollten Vereinbarungen für die Verwendung fremder Bilder immer schriftlich vorliegen (E-Mail-Bestätigung genügt).» A signature is the cleanest proof, but an email confirmation is enough according to the IPI. That is exactly what the follow-up email below relies on.

Keep the sheet to A4 and to a single page. The moment it runs to two pages nobody reads it at the handover, and then nobody signs it either.

The follow-up email for old projects

Almost every business has photos on a phone that nobody ever released. That is not a reason to delete them, it is a reason to ask. This wording gets to the point and works with customers you have not seen in years.

Email to a past customer

Subject: Quick question about the photos of your kitchen

Dear Ms [Name]

We fitted your kitchen in [month, year]. We took a few photos of the finished work at the time; they are attached, and there are no people in them.

May we show two or three of them on our website and in our Google profile? We would name the municipality only, not your address.

A short yes or no by reply is all we need. If it is a no, the photos stay with us, and that is genuinely no problem.

Kind regards

Three things make this text work. The photos are attached, so the customer does not have to guess what is meant; the FDPIC expressly notes that people should see the images before publication. The scope is limited, two or three photos rather than everything. And the no is explicitly allowed. Make the no easy and you get more yeses.

What belongs in the caption

The release is the precondition, but it does not yet make a gallery convincing. That takes four details per photo: the task, the material, the municipality and the year. Instead of “kitchen” you get “kitchen in solid oak, refit in a terraced house”, plus municipality and year.

Of the four, the location is the most important and the one left out most often. When I look at joinery and landscaping websites, there is usually nothing under the photos at all. Yet the location does two jobs at once. It shows someone in the same village that you work in the same village, and it is exactly the connection people search for when they want a business nearby. Anyone who also wants to show up in Google Maps and the Business Profile needs that same detail anyway.

That is why the location question sits on the sheet as its own line with three tick boxes. Not as an afterthought, but because whether the reference is worth anything later hangs on it. How such a gallery should be built I have described in detail on the page for joinery and interior fit-out.

Photos of your own staff

The second topic that arrives at the same moment: the best site photo usually has someone from your team in it. The same pattern applies as above, consent for taking the photo and again for using it, but with an added difficulty.

An employment relationship is not a relationship between equals. Consent is only valid if it is given freely, and freely means that saying no must carry no disadvantage. The Swiss specialist publisher WEKA puts it plainly in an article of 31 July 2026: there must be no negative consequences whatsoever for employees who decline to be photographed or filmed at a company event. For publication on the internet or on social media, the same article says implied consent is not enough; it takes informed, voluntary and express consent.

Departures make this concrete. If someone withdraws consent or leaves and wants the photos gone, they belong off the website, off social media and out of internal systems. Brochures already printed are generally exempt, which is the same logic as on the customer sheet. And an informal yes at the staff outing helps you little in a dispute, because it cannot be evidenced. Two sentences with a signature in the personnel file solve that.

Because recognisable people in photos count as personal data, how you handle them also belongs in your privacy policy. That is a line of work if you get it right while the site is being built.

AI images, briefly

Only as far as I can back it up. There is currently no explicit statutory duty in Switzerland to label AI generated content; that is how the WEKA specialist article by lawyer Cornelia Mattig of 5 March 2026 states it. What obligations may still follow in an individual case, for instance from unfair competition or data protection law, is a question for a professional and not for this article. Anyone deliberately addressing an audience in the EU should check the rules there separately; I have verified no source on that here.

For a reference gallery the question is academic anyway. A generated image in a reference gallery proves the exact opposite of what the gallery is for. What you show there is what you built. A picture of something that was never built does not belong in it, whatever the law happens to say.

What the sheet cannot do

It does not replace a legal assessment. It is a practical aid that covers the common case, and it is deliberately short so that it actually gets signed at the handover. A professional is worth the money when people are prominent in the photo and conflict is foreseeable, when the property was designed by an architect and the publication is a large one, when a departure was contentious, or when the photos are going into paid advertising.

Everything else is a habit, not a legal question. This is how I run it myself: before a customer project goes onto my site, the written release is in hand, and for private properties I get it in advance. That commitment is on my page for joinery businesses, and this article is the groundwork behind it.

If you have a website with an empty gallery because the releases are missing, that is a solvable problem. Take the sheet to your next five handovers and send the follow-up text to ten old projects. In a month you will have enough material for a gallery that actually proves something. Where the photos should come from, and whether a paid shoot is needed at all, I have written up in phone photos or a photo shoot.