Most people have heard of traditional home staging, which is adding furniture and decor to a home that's listed for sale. Staged homes sell faster, quicker, and for more money. They also help buyers envision the potential within the different spaces of home. There's little question about the value of live home staging to sellers, buyers and realtors alike. Since 2020, the real estate industry looks and functions quite a bit differently than it used to. Like many industries, home staging continues to evolve. More and more realtors are encouraging virtual staging for their clients. Just like it sounds, virtual staging adds furniture, decor and accessories--but only digitally.

Benefits of Virtual Staging

Like traditional home staging, luxury virtual staging provides buyers with the opportunity to better imagine themselves and their families in the property that's being marketed to them. Both types of staging make for better listing photos. Virtual staging has many exclusive benefits, though:

Price! This is the number one benefit. Virtual staging is roughly 90% less expensive than traditional "live" staging. Virtual stagers do not have to physically "own" inventory, nor do they have to pay to store it, or hire movers to shuffle it around from home-to-home. Since virtual staging companies aren't paying all this overhead, these cost savings are passed on to realtors and sellers. If an average house costs $3,500.00 to physically stage, plus an additional $1,500.00 per month in furniture rental fees - a virtually staged house will likely cost somewhere around $400 - and just once! This dramatically lower price is a lot easier for sellers to accept. This makes the realtor's job of marketing and selling the home a lot more straightforward!

Inventory

A luxury virtual staging company has access to thousands of pieces of furniture, art, rugs, decor and plants. There simply is no comparison when it comes to style and selection. Virtual staging companies can access any furnishing style at the touch of a button, and there will likely be dozens of configurations within each style.

• Modern
• Traditional
• Scandinavian
• Mid-Century Modern
• Modern Farmhouse
• Eclectic
• Luxury

Having access to an enormous inventory proves useful for realtors and sellers who hope to have a greater say in exactly which pieces are placed. For instance, if a realtor tells me they would like a contemporary velvet couch in a navy or teal shade, with maroon or marigold accent pillows all I have to do is select the matching options and copy them into an email and let the realtor make the final selection. In a traditional home staging scenario, this level of detailed input is unlikely to be accessible to realtors and sellers.

Which blue couch would you choose? With luxury virtual staging, you'll enjoy the opportunity to be more selective. 

Flexibility

Another key benefit of virtual staging is the flexibility it offers. When a realtor meets with a traditional live home stager, they would of course have some input on the design and flow of the different spaces within the property, but on "staging day," that sense of control evaporates. The stager will undoubtedly try their best to match the realtor's hopes with the limited inventory they have access to, but when the "move-in" is complete, that's basically it for the realtor and they are forced to accept the majority of the designing that the stager has done in the home.

In contrast, when a realtor meets with a virtual stager and discusses the needs/wants of the property they have so much more input into the design and that input actually grows over the course of the project instead of decreasing. With luxury virtual staging, it often takes a couple times to match the realtor's vision for the property, and that's no problem!

For instance, with these scenes below the realtor asked for a young kid's classroom type of setup since so many kids are online schooling currently. The first picture was what I presented them with:

After viewing it, the realtor decided that while she liked the "classroom" concept, she desired a more polished look for the room. I was able to create the photo below in just a few extra minutes and she was thrilled with the end result:

The benefits of increased design flexibility, lower cost and larger inventory are just the tip of the iceberg when evaluating the contributions that virtual staging is making to the home staging industry, With Winnow + Gild Luxury Virtual Staging, the first virtually staged photo is always free for new clients. See for yourself risk free by reaching out to us!