Do you have questions about Virtual Home Staging and how/if it will work for you? Please read the questions below. You can also contact us and we are sure they will be happy to answer any questions that you have.
Home staging, real estate staging, house fluffing, or simply “staging”, as it is commonly known is anything that helps a home seller make their home more attractive and appealing to potential buyers.
The exact definition of what staging encompasses does vary, but typically, a professional home stager brings in furniture, artwork, plants, rugs and accessories to make a house look it’s best while on the market. Some “full service” stagers also offer contractor consulting services which may include choosing paints, tiles, carpets, etc, and working with the contractors to get the house ready.
Sometimes the seller will want to use their own furnishings, and the stager can consult with them on how to reduce clutter, open up rooms more, etc. This specialty of making the most of what you have is often called “Redesign”, and there are many home stagers who do both Home Staging and interior redesign.
Sometimes house stagers will also help reduce the negative impact of some challenge the house has. For example, if there is traffic noise from a busy street nearby, they might put a fountain in the yard to create a more pleasant atmosphere. One may think that buyers make logical decisions, but often emotions guide buyers to what just “feels right”. Creating a warm, inviting and attractive atmosphere can make a huge difference to the seller of a home.
A new world of home staging is also emerging with the advent of Virtual Home Staging. This is basically digitally placing 3D models into a photograph to help Vacant Properties sell faster. Virtual Home Staging requires both a 3D artist (or someone skilled in 3D modeling) and a professional home stager. Vacant Room Staging is typically used to boost the appeal of online imagery or to help prospective buyers visualize the potential of a room or space.
Staging can range from a simple consultation with the sellers about how to reduce clutter, to completely running a project, including painting, landscaping, flooring and, of course, staging the interior of the home with furniture, plants, artwork accessories and more For more details.
HomeStaging.com is a joint venture between the HomeStaging.com domain service and Left of the Dot Media Inc who got together to build out a website that connects home stagers with those looking to obtain home staging services. It is our goal to ensure that every house sold sells for its optimal value while furthering the profession of home staging. Should you have more questions about the management of HomeStaging.com, please contact us.
It only takes 5 steps for you to get started and receive your virtually-staged photos back. The process is simple:
- Sign up for free
- Upload your images
- Describe your photos
- Pay for your virtual staging (money-back guarantee)
- Receive staged photos in 3-5 days via email
After our virtual staging partner digitally places furniture into the photos, your staged photos will be sent back to you in JPG format.
Staging your vacant room photos can be done for as little as $60 per room, depending on the number of images you order. Click here to view our pricing. A single image is presently priced at $70.
Panoramic photos are not recommended. Most of the time they will appear distorted and you will not be satisfied with how they turn out.
As you will be returned your photos in the same size and quality that you had sent them in, it is a good idea to send us the best quality you can get. We recommend photos to be at least 500 pixels wide. For reference, the average webpage shows at about 1024 pixels wide. This means that if your photo covers your full screen and does not look distorted or grainy, it will probably work for us. If you plan on printing or enlarging your photos, we recommend sending them in as good as resolution as you can muster.
.JPG or .JPEG format is the best format to send to us.
We can only virtually stage and furnish vacant rooms at this time. If you have a furnished room, we would recommend hiring a professional stager to come in and work with the space, then hiring a photographer to take good pictures.
But if you have vacant room photos, then get them virtually staged. You will get more calls and more leads from your online listings as you help would-be buyers better visualize the potential of a space.
Our 3d Artist and Staging partner can virtually stage an order consisting of 1-7 photos in 3-5 business days. If you have a large amount of photos it may take a few additional days.
If you need your photos in a rush, oh-my-god-emergency, we understand that you will sometimes have short deadlines. Depending upon our 3D fulfillment partner’s availability, they will try to work with you on a specific delivery date if you absolutely need them quickly. However, the best option remains you getting your photos to us as early as possible. Our designers also treat every photo as a work of art and prefer not to be rushed.
If you are waiting for your virtually staged photos before publishing your listing to the MLS, we encourage you to get your vacant room properties up first, then change them out with your virtually changed photos once they are ready.
For most projects, we are unable to remove furniture from your submitted picture. However, in some instances our 3D artist partners have worked magic, depending upon where the furniture is placed they may be able to remove it or add accessories to the furniture to make it look better (e.g., adding pillows to a bed or couch)
You can email or upload your photos prior to placing an order and our fulfillment partner will let you know what they can do with them.
These tips should help you get some good photos that can be virtually staged:
- Try to avoid using an excessively wide angle camera or distorting the proportions of a room. The staging process matches the furniture to the proportions of the room and if your photos make a room appear larger than it actually is we may add furniture that would not actually fit in the room. Distorted photos also limit our ability to match the furniture to the proper perspective of the room.
- Take the picture from the corner of the room for best results.
- Avoid having bright lights or windows near the center of the picture.
- Set your camera to take the brightest and “cleanest” pictures
- Choose the highest resolution that your camera would allow. The higher the resolution, the better the picture, the more satisfied you will be with the results.
- Just as though you were showing the house, if there are any lights in the room turn all of them on.
- Shoot directly across the room, not up or down.
- Use a portable tripod if available to prevent any motion blur.
- Try to avoid the “fish bowl” look that you often get with wide-angle shots as these will not work with virtual staging
- Try to avoid standing in areas where furniture would commonly be placed in the room
- Stand in areas where the furniture would look most appealing from if it were actually in the room at the time of photographing.
Happy photographing!
No. Virtual Staging is about envisioning the true potential of a vacant space, not about full remodeling. We are unable to patch or move walls or do anything that is designed to deceive the prospective home buyers.
