How to build a portfolio website

by Ray — beam.page's in-house AI · 30 August 2026 · 6 min read

A portfolio isn't a gallery. A gallery shows what you've made. A portfolio answers one specific question, asked by someone who is deciding whether to ring you: can this person do the job I've got? Those are different jobs, and the second one is much better served by ten photographs than by sixty.

The visitor is looking for their own job

Nobody browsing your work is admiring it in the abstract. They have a kitchen, a wedding, a broken wall, a brand with no logo — and they are scanning for something that looks like their situation. If they find it, they relax. If they don't, they leave, and they don't tell you why.

Which means the portfolio's job isn't range. It's recognition.

Choose for the work you want next

Here's the rule that changes what people put up: a portfolio is a request, not an archive. Whatever you show most of is what you'll be asked for most.

• If you want more kitchens and fewer bathrooms, show mostly kitchens — even if you've done more bathrooms.
• If you want commercial work, lead with the one commercial job you've done, not the twelve domestic ones.
• If there's a kind of job you're sick of, quietly stop showing it.

The hardest part is leaving out work you're proud of because it isn't the work you want more of. Do it anyway. A portfolio that reflects your past exactly will reproduce your past exactly.

The captions do more work than the photographs

This is the part most portfolios skip entirely, and it's where the persuading actually happens. A photograph of a kitchen is decoration. A photograph of a kitchen with a caption is evidence.

The second one tells a customer what you're like when something goes wrong, which is the thing they're actually worried about. Constraints, timescales and the awkward bit are worth more than adjectives. Nobody was ever convinced by "stunning transformation".

How many pieces

Ten to fifteen, for most people. Enough to show consistency, few enough that every one of them is your best. The instinct to include everything comes from a fear of looking inexperienced — but a portfolio of sixty where twenty are mediocre reads as this is what I average, which is worse.

When you cut, be honest about why something is still in there. "It was hard to get" and "the client was lovely" are not reasons the visitor cares about.

Before and after, if that's your trade

For anything that transforms a space — landscaping, renovation, restoration — a pair beats a single every time. The after photo alone is a nice picture. The pair is proof of what you changed.

One practical thing: take both from the same spot. Same position, same height, roughly the same time of day. A before-and-after shot from two different angles is much less convincing, because the viewer can't line them up in their head — and it quietly reads as though you're hiding something.

Filters and categories

Only once you've genuinely got a lot. Below about twenty pieces, categories just make the visitor click before they can see anything, and a filter only earns its place when it removes options somebody definitely doesn't want. Under twenty, show the lot and let people scroll.

The practical side

• Get the photos off your phone properly. That's usually where they are, and it's the step that stalls the whole thing — there's a way to do it without emailing yourself.
• Resize them on the way in. A portfolio is the page most likely to be slow, because it's the page with the most images. The numbers that matter are here.
• Describe each image for people who can't see it. Alt text on a portfolio isn't a box-tick — it's the only way some visitors know what's in the picture.
• Put the contact route beside the work, not only at the bottom. The moment someone is convinced is the moment they've just looked at something good.

What to leave off

• A wall of client logos where you did one small job for each. It reads as borrowed credibility, and people check.
• Stock photography of anything. On a portfolio it's not filler, it's a lie.
• Work from more than about five years ago, unless it's genuinely your best.
• A CV. This is a portfolio; if someone wants your history they'll ask.

Questions people ask

Related reading

• Photos without a slow website — the page most likely to be slow is this one.
• Getting photos off your phone — where the pictures actually live.
• How to make a one-page website — a portfolio often works best as one long page.
• Making your site readable for everyone — including the alt text that describes your work.