Isn't Staging What I See on HGTV? (Staging Misconception #1)

Updated: Sep 20, 2020

Everyone’s seen HGTV house-flipping shows, neatly packaged into an hour of blissfully beautiful home design. At about the 47 minute–mark, you-know-who makes an appearance with their moving truck, loads of boxes, and gorgeous plastic-wrapped furniture.....

Enter: The Staging Company! Now, unless you have a totally vacant house, you won’t be staging in that way (but you should if it is vacant. More on that in a different post!) Most likely, you will be living in your house when you put it up for sale. Enter: The Occupied Home Stager. Yes! There is such a thing!

Staging is the art and science of marketing your house by creatively designing a space that home buyers can aspire to. You want buyers to “feel at home” when they walk in to YOUR home, because you want them to BUY it. In an occupied home, a stager will creatively use what you already have in your home, but arrange and edit it to highlight and focus buyers on the features of your house, not your belongings.

In fact, an occupied-home staging consultation should examine at least 9 aspects of each room, analyzing and adjusting, prioritizing and visualizing each space: including what to remove, what to bring in, highlight, downplay, lighten up, paint, clean, move to a different room, change, purchase, rent, update, buy, emphasize, and how to live there during showings.

Example of an Owner-Occupied Staging after a Consultation:

The changes a stager recommends can dramatically improve “buyer-love” while keeping your budget in mind. Staging maximizes the value of your home with small, key investments.

The more buyers you appeal to with your beautiful online photos, the more showings you will have, and the faster you will sell your house for more money.

So unless you are planning on selling a vacant house, you won’t see that big stager’s moving truck, but just may see a clipboard holding a Staging Action Plan during our DIYer's Consultation, or a few accessory boxes to supplement your décor on our hands-on Photo-Prep Enhancement +Accessories Package Staging Day.