Virtual furniture replacement - New Interior Solutions

Staging an occupied home during the pandemic

Not even two years have passed since I decided to leave behind my more than ten-year career as a traditional home stager to start working as a virtual home stager. Despite my departure from the world of traditional staging, I still try to keep in touch with my former colleagues. A few days ago, talking to one of them, I asked her how the situation is now that the real estate world (and not only) has been turned upside down by Covid-19 and we are in the midst of a pandemic. She told me that at the moment she is only staging empty houses, for obvious reasons of hygiene and contagion. That made me wonder: what are the options if you need to stage an occupied home?

In my opinion, these are the possible solutions:

Hire a professional for a virtual consultation

The first option is to hire a professional to give the seller the instructions to do a DIY staging. If the consultation cannot be done in person, the alternative is to offer a virtual consultation. Today many stagers provide this kind of service, either by working with the photos that the seller or the agent provides or by making video calls.

Provide a standard checklist

The second option is to give the seller a standard checklist with basic but important information on how to prepare the house for the market. Many agents already have such a checklist in their files. Here’s an example from my old staging days that you are welcome to use.

Offer virtual staging

The third option is to use virtual staging. Actually, it would be better to call it virtual furniture replacement in this case since the house is still occupied by the owner and their possessions. The process consists of taking photos of the rooms as they are and replacing the real furniture and accessories with virtual ones (you can find more information here). The benefit of this service is that you can also change the finishes of the room to recreate a very attractive space. The result is a powerful image that helps the buyer visualize the potential of the property.

Here’s a recent project I worked on explained in three basic steps.

This is the photo the client sent:

This is how we “erased” the real furniture and changed the finishes (wallpaper instead of paint):

And this is the final result that shows how the living room can look after a light remodeling:

How have you handled the home staging of occupied properties during the pandemic? Have you considered any of these options? If so, which one?

This is how virtual staging can help you save some money

Click and drag the arrow left and right to see the before and after image

Having worked as a home stager for more than a decade now and having seen firsthand how the simple transformation of an interior captures the attention and interest of buyers, I can only say that home staging works and it is a smart investment.

Entering an empty house gives a completely different feeling than entering a well-furnished and welcoming home. However, is it really necessary to stage all the rooms in a house? I don’t think so. Don’t get me wrong, if the budget allows it, staging the whole house is a great idea, but most of the time it becomes too expensive and often unnecessary.

So how should secondary rooms be presented? The options are two: either leave them empty or virtually stage them. Virtual staging doesn’t only mean furnishing a room with digital furniture, it also means modifying the space to show its potential even at a structural level.

The room above, for example, had some very nice and distinctive features. As part of a Seattle house built at the beginning of the last century, it featured two areas divided by a slightly ornate arch that made the room truly unique. The owner had just changed the color of the walls by painting them a nice and calming green, but the carpet, he said, would have remained.

Using one of the photos taken during the consultation, I managed to show not only how the room could be used by removing the existing furniture and replacing it with new one, but also how it could look once the carpet was replaced with some nice wooden flooring which, in my opinion, would have made it look more modern and attractive in the eyes of the buyer.

This solution not only cost much less than traditional staging but also than a renovation. Removing the carpet and refinishing the floor would have cost hundreds of dollars. However, with virtual staging, not only you can help the buyer visualize a room and see its potential, but you can also help the seller save some money.

This solution also helps real estate agents be on the cutting edge with the latest technology and the most innovative marketing methods.

Do you need help to digitally remove some old furniture from a room and upgrade it with new one without spending tons of money? Visit this page to get more information and to understand how it works!