The Difference Between Staging and Interior Design
Frequently, we’re asked what the difference is between staging a house for sale and home design. For starters, it’s the audience. Staging a house is a marketing technique. Along with MLS, a sign in your front yard, and online photos, staging is a tool that markets your home in its best light to appeal to the highest number of potential buyers.
Design, on the other hand, will make your home comfortable, inviting, and aesthetically pleasing for you, your family, and your lifestyle.
Five Differences between Staging and Design
1. Audience: Home Buyers or Homeowners
Potential buyers are the audience when a home is for sale. The stager will meet with home seller to walk through the seller’s house before photos and Multiple Listings. The goal is for furnishings, decorations and surroundings to appeal to as many people as possible. Stagers will usually suggest taking down all personal items to make the home feel like it could be someone else’s home. Pre-packing those sports team items, college diplomas, and family reunion photos will make it easier for a potential buyer to picture themselves living in that house.
You and your family’s style are the priority when a home needs a new design. The designer will meet with you to get a sense of your tastes, work with way the family lives, and include your likes/dislikes. Personal photos, and items that appeal to the family are on display.
2. Furniture: Looks Nice or Feels Comfy and Fits Your Personal Style.
In staging, furniture is often lightweight to enable a quick move-in, move-out. The stager will choose the furniture that works best for each room. In an occupied stage, the home seller’s own items are used as much as possible. For a vacant stage, the owners have moved out, and the stager brings in all furnishings and decorations. Accessories are appealing to a wide variety of people, and often neutral in style.
In design, the designer guides the client through various styles and options, taking comfort and family routines into consideration. Designs are the taste of you and your family, with guidance from a designer.
3. Speed: A few hours to stage, a few weeks/months for design.
Professional staging is usually quick. Once the seller has made necessary repairs, they are ready to enlist the stager’s help. Stagers and their moving crew prepare the home in a way that appeals to the masses.
Design can take weeks or months to get your home exactly how you want it. Some items may need to be special ordered or put into place by contractors. Many customers splurge since they will be living with their decisions for a long time, and buy high-end countertops, furniture, art, etc.
4. Color: Neutral or Take a Chance
For a staged home, since you’re trying to appeal to people with different tastes, it’s usually best to keep the color palette simple. Neutral walls, floors, furniture and paints. Accessories like art and pillows provide a nice pop of color that will direct a buyer’s eyes to the highlights of the home for sale.
A designer can help you take a chance in your own home. Love orange? Or green? Designers can help you find paint that “speaks” to your heart, patterns that you love, and surroundings that invite you to enjoy life to the fullest with those close to you.
5. Space: Photo Ready or Relax and Enjoy
When getting a house ready for sale, stagers are helping to get your rooms ready for photographs and for buyer tours. Making rooms look spacious, inviting, and full of natural light is the goal. Wide pathways between furniture leaves room for buyers and their realtor to easily view the house.
When you live in a home, you and your designer will work together to arrange furniture in a setting that takes into account the way you live, entertain, and relax. Yes, designers help you make rooms look balanced and attractive, but livability is the name of the game.
Using furniture, accessories, rugs, and other suggestions, a stager will guide the buyers’ eyes to highlight aspects of a home for sale. Their training/certification also allows for redesign services. Often, a client will hire a stager to present their home for sale, and then fall in love so much with the stager’s style, that they invite them to their new home and have their new home design implemented by the stager.
We’re always thrilled to stage homes for sellers and provide design ideas/plans for homeowners who desire updated design ideas/plans. For more information, please contact us at Kerry@shamrockhilldesign.com or 410-474-5523 or visit our website at www.shamrockhilldesign.com