Stagers

How do stagers do what they do so well?

Most successful stagers have an "eye" for design, for color, for arranging furniture, for creating excitement -- the "wow" factor that is so important in grabbing a prospective buyers attention.

On this site you can learn to stage your own home or learn how to stage homes as a potential career. We even offer you all our staging forms and checklists so you can have all the tools we use in our day-to-day business activities.

But what about the other characteristics of stagers we mentioned above? How do you develop:

• An Eye for Design Although some people are born with a good "eye" when it comes to design, others have to learn this skill through education and exposure to lots of design ideas. Read lots of magazines and look at the elements of design in a room. Check out the fabrics, the colors, the textures, the way the scale of the furniture relates to the space. It is also important to read the accompanying articles for information from the designer about how they approached the design of the room, what challenges they faced and the preferences of their client. Everyone works with a set of "givens" (room size, budget, taste preferences). Learning how others work with their set of "givens" will help you learn how to approach design and develop your "eye".
• Good color sense Everyone sees color and responds to it differently. It is how you use the color in a room setting that will dictate the mood and feeling you want to convey. An all beige room can be boring (usually) or it can be dynamic in the hands of professional interior designers. You don't want to present a boring beige room to prospective home buyers when you've completed staging the room. You need to develop a good color sense to know how to use what you have (or can purchase or acquire cheaply) to maximize impact and memorability. This will come with practice and by studying color theory as it is used by professional designers.
• Furniture placement skills On this site we give instructions and rules of thumb for furniture placement in various rooms of a house. The keys to remember for stagers when they are placing furniture is to keep the walkways open, use furniture to highlight room features (not the furniture) and to use furniture to create welcoming and comfortable spaces. Spaces that look natural to buyers. Stagers know how to put "just enough" furniture in a room so that it conveys the feeling of spaciousness. Here is another skill that can be learned by doing as well as through space planning instruction.
• The "wow" factor Sometimes, a room will already have a wow factor such as a wall of windows, an antique limestone mantel, a killer kitchen. As stagers, it is our responsibility to draw attention to them. If the room has no wow factor, then we must create it. Perhaps we will use color to achieve it. Other times, we will select furniture pieces that create the drama a room lacks. Sometimes, art and accessories fill the bill. But, we need to get it from somewhere, somehow. Check out our photos, photos in magazines and on TV. See if you can pinpoint the wow factor in the room and how the stager chose to highlight it. This will help you develop a personal "library" of wow factor techniques.

Do you watch "The Stagers" on television? Most of the time, they start with empty spaces and have to completely fill them with inspired design that will motivate potential buyers to make an offer. Listen carefully (between the bouts of mayhem and overacting) to why they are picking certain sofas off the warehouse shelf, and why they select certain types of art, why they are picking this shade of orange, etc. You will find that there is a wealth of education to be learned from the nitty-gritty details in this show.

Our job is to create a scene that encourages potential home buyers to take action. They use design tools such as color, texture, furniture placement and mood to set the scene to facilitate the sale.

Go to Stage & Sell from Stagers.