To create a real estate virtual tour in WordPress, photograph each room with a 360° camera, then use the free Photo Sphere Viewer plugin: insert the 360° Virtual Tour block, pick the room photos, click on each doorway to place an arrow, and set each room's starting view. The free version has no room limit and includes gyroscope viewing on phones.
A virtual tour lets buyers walk through a property at their own pace before they book a viewing, so the people who do call already like the layout. This guide covers the whole job: shooting, building the tour, and the details that make it feel like walking through the real home.
What you need
- A 360° camera that exports stitched equirectangular images (2:1 ratio) — Ricoh Theta, Insta360, GoPro MAX, Qoocam and Kandao all do.
- A tripod or monopod, so the camera is steady and the operator can step out of the shot.
- WordPress with Photo Sphere Viewer installed (free). You can try it first with Live Preview on its WordPress.org page.
- About 15 minutes per property once the photos are ready.
Step 1: Shoot the property
- Prepare every room first. Open the blinds, switch on all the lights, open interior doors and clear the counters. A 360° photo shows everything.
- Put the camera at chest height (about 1.5 m) in the middle of each room. It reads as a natural standing height.
- Shoot at the highest resolution your camera allows. A 360° image is stretched across a whole sphere, so it needs far more pixels than a flat photo.
- Step out of sight, or use the camera's app to trigger the shot from another room.
- Note which rooms connect. You'll need it when placing arrows.
- Add outside spots — the street, the garden, the view from the balcony. Buyers care about them as much as the kitchen.
Export each shot as a JPEG and upload them to the Media Library. Most cameras and their apps export equirectangular images by default.
Step 2: Build the tour
In the block editor: insert the 360° Virtual Tour block and pick the room photos. They're linked in the order you choose, so start with the entrance.
In Elementor: drag the PSV Virtual Tour widget onto the listing page and add one scene per room.
Anywhere else: build a [psv_tour] shortcode in the Shortcode Builder (in the Photo Sphere Viewer admin menu) and paste it into a classic editor page, widget area or theme builder template.
Give each scene a caption buyers understand — "Kitchen", "Primary bedroom", "Garden". There's no limit on scenes in the free version, so you don't have to drop the laundry room to stay under a cap.
Step 3: Link the rooms with arrows
Each scene gets 3D arrows that take the visitor to another room. The rule that makes a tour feel real: put the arrow where the doorway actually is. In the block, click Place arrow, then click the doorway in the photo.
Link both directions — hallway to kitchen and kitchen back to hallway — so visitors never reach a dead end.
Step 4: Set the starting view of each room
Use Set starting view in the block (or the starting yaw and pitch in Elementor and shortcodes) so each room opens on its best feature:
- Living room — facing the windows or fireplace.
- Kitchen — facing the counters and island, not the fridge door.
- Bedroom — facing the bed and the window.
- Entrance — looking down the hallway into the home.
Then choose which scene loads first. For most listings it's the front door or the living room.
Step 5: Label features on your best panorama
For a hero shot — usually the living room or kitchen — add a 360° Panorama block above or below the tour and give it info hotspots. Click Place on panorama, then click the feature. Each hotspot shows a label on hover and opens a panel with text and a link: "Quartz worktops, fitted 2025", "South-facing garden", "Book a viewing".
The free version includes five hotspots per panorama — enough for the selling points of one room.
Step 6: Publish and check it on a phone
Preview the page on a phone. Drag-to-look and pinch-to-zoom work on touch screens, and gyroscope viewing lets buyers look around by moving the phone (your site needs HTTPS). Check every arrow leads where you expect, then publish.
When Pro is worth it for property tours
The free tour is complete. Photo Sphere Viewer Pro adds what helps a tour sell:
| Pro feature | What it does for a listing |
|---|---|
| Unlimited hotspots with photos | Label every feature, and show a photo in the panel — the floor plan, the view, the finish — right where the buyer is looking. |
| Scene gallery bar | A strip of room thumbnails, so buyers jump straight to the kitchen instead of clicking through the hallway. |
| Compass | An overlay showing which way the buyer is facing as they look around. |
| Full-resolution originals | Loads your original upload instead of WordPress's 2560px copy, so detail stays sharp — essential for drone shots of the plot. |
| Restricted viewing angle | Hides the tripod, a bare ceiling or anything else you'd rather keep out of frame. |
| Priority email support | Direct help from the WPXERO team. |
Pro starts at $19.99 a year or $59.99 lifetime for one site, $59.99 a year for five sites, and $159.99 a year for agencies with up to 50 sites. Tours stay on your own site, with no hosted embed account and no per-tour fee, and Pro comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Tips for tours that sell
- Keep the same light in every room so the tour doesn't jump between warm and cold.
- Skip empty corridors. Link rooms directly if a hallway adds nothing.
- Use captions buyers search for — "Primary suite with walk-in closet" beats "Room 4".
- Put the tour high on the listing, above or right after the photo gallery.
- Reuse the tour in emails and social posts by linking to the listing page.
Choosing a tour plugin
If you're comparing options, the main difference between WordPress tour plugins is how many rooms the free version allows and what Pro costs. Our comparison of WordPress virtual tour plugins covers WPVR, iPanorama 360 and Panorama side by side. For aerial shots, see why drone panoramas look blurry on WordPress, and the complete Photo Sphere Viewer guide explains every setting.