A home staging business beats out an interior design business when you’re looking for what type of business to start. It’s important to know that as a home stager you can also offer interior redesign services and color consulting, much like many interior designers do.
People who have just spent 4 years studying interior design at college might not like reading this, but if your goal is using your creative and decorating talents to earn a living, a home staging business is a much easier path to take than opening an interior design firm.
Here are 5 reasons why:
1. Home Staging Business is Easier to Start
You can’t call yourself an Interior Designer unless you’ve completed a recognized college degree in interior design. This can take you 4 years and thousands of dollars to complete.
There is no such requirement to call yourself a home stager or decorator. These are completely unregulated fields, with no official credentials.
2. Larger Market for Home Staging and Redesign
The vast majority of people would never dream of hiring an interior designer. They believe this is something celebrities and millionaires do. They worry that an interior designer will recommend expensive renovations and force them to replace all their furniture. That’s what they see on all those home makeover TV shows. Plus, decorating magazines rarely feature average homes their readers can relate to, instead they showcase million dollar properties most of us can only dream about.
In other words, the media reinforce the idea that interior design is only for the very wealthy. Home staging and interior redesign, on the other hand, appeal to a much wider market.
Someone who wouldn’t have thought of hiring an interior designer will contact a home stager when they want to make more money when they sell their home. They rightly expect a financial return on their investment in home staging. Home staging is an investment, rather than an expense.
Even when I’m not promoting my interior redesign or color consultation services, I find people contact me for that. They’ll say, “I’m not moving right now, but I’m hoping you can help me enjoy my home more in the meantime. I don’t want to replace everything and I’m sure as a home stager you can show me how to reuse what I already have in better ways.”
3. Home Staging Business Offers Greater Creative Freedom
When I started my home staging business in 2002, I was worried that it wouldn’t offer me enough creative freedom. I knew I’d often be working with what a client already has.
What I discovered to my great surprise is that home staging actually offers me more creative freedom. My clients aren’t worried that they have to live with my choices, so they let me do what I want as long as it fits their budget and time constraints.
I’ve done tons of interior redesign and color consulting projects for people who aren’t moving. With these clients it’s all about what they will be comfortable living with, and rightly so.
They can take months to decide which dining room furniture to buy, or they might follow my recommendations and then add something else that clashes with everything we’ve done! It’s their home, so I can’t tell them it’s “gotta go!” It just means I won’t be taking those “after” shots for my portfolio!
4. Home Staging Business Doesn’t Require Drawing Skill
I really admire those Interior Designers who do a detailed sketch of what the renovations or new furniture will look like. These are needed to sell the client on all the money they’re going to spend and what the end result will be.
I have no idea how to do that, though I’m sure I’d be better at it if I spent 4 years at college perfecting that skill.
I’ve done hundreds of homes and I’ve never had to do a drawing for my client. For my home staging clients who have vacant homes, I draw a very messy floor plan of my own because they won’t ever see it. It’s just a quick freehand drawing of the room’s walls with measurements and I note the location of windows and doors to help me with furniture placement. I don’t actually draw any of the furniture, except perhaps rough rectangles to note what furniture I’m planning on sourcing.
For my interior redesign clients, I might bring in samples of tiles, carpet or flooring and paint swatches to show how everything goes together, but I never actually give them a drawing or computer rendering of the finished room. When I’m recommending furniture purchases, I show them photos or meet them in the actual store so they can see the items in person.
5. Home Staging Business Offers Faster Profits
Interior design projects tend to take longer because of renovations and new furniture purchases. Despite what you see on TV where an entire home can be built in a weekend, in the real world it takes months to line up contractors and tradespeople and get all the work completed.
It’s a rare furniture store that has what you need in stock (unless you’re buying the floor samples), most make you wait months for delivery after ordering.
Many home staging, interior redesign and color consulting projects can be completed in a day or two. That means you get in, provide your advice/do the work, and get out with your money quickly.
Since you don’t have to invest in any of your own inventory (when you follow the business model I teach in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program), you can be making a profit from your very first home staging client.
Many of my students, like Holly Battaglia for example, make enough from their very first client to pay for all of their training and make a profit too.
While it’s not necessary to study interior design to be a home stager, I do have graduates who are already interior designers when they take my program. Many of them are looking for a way to recession proof their interior design business by adding home staging services!
What do you think?
Whether you’re a home stager, interior designer or just thinking of entering these fields, I’d love for you to share your thoughts and questions in the comment section below.
Curious About How Much Money Home Stagers Make?
You might be wondering how much home stagers make. I’ve prepared a handy FREE Tip Sheet showing the various phases of a home staging project and how much money you can make at each step, when you follow the approach I teach my students.
Debra, great read as always. I was having coffee with an interior designer friend the other day (joys of this job and working for yourself!) He has a staging component to his interior design business. He told me that his interior design projects are one part designing to about 9 parts project management and that he looked forward to staging projects to fuel his creativity. Its an interesting perspective. Beyond a bit of admin stagers don’t really get caught up in the whole project management/chasing up the plumber piece.
Also, when people ring me up for re-design work I usually say “I’m not a trained interior designer but that might not be what you are looking for” and I stress that I’ll work with what they have and within budget. I agree that when people hear ‘interior designer’ they hear ‘money’ My clients love that I’ll recommend high street stores or tell them that the upstairs sofa can be re-used in the rumpus. This is not about living in a magazine shoot, its about creating a comfortable home that you want to be in.
Imogen, thanks so much for sharing your experience and especially that conversation with the Interior Designer. Most helpful to everyone in our community!
I also love your last part, “This is not about living in a magazine shoot, its about creating a comfortable home that you want to be in.” So true! Most of the homes you see in magazine shoots look spectacularly impractical. My fave is the white couch and glass coffee table carefully arranged with sharp heavy objects in a house with young children 🙂
Debra, I couldn’t agree with you more. If I had to make a living from interior decorating clients only, I would have been out of business long ago. They take their time with making decisions on things I’ve selected for them because there is no immediacy to doing so, unlike staging where they have to get their homes staged because they are putting it on the market. Sometimes weeks pass or even months before I hear from my decorating clients again.
Also, as you said, the decorating client can do what they want. I’ve been very frustrated by a client buying what they like, only to ruin the design I’ve put into place. And yes, I don’t take those photos for my portfolio.
I love that with staging, we have basically total creative control, unlike decorating. Also we get in and out of a project quickly, while with decorating it goes on forever. I always feel like I’ve got something hanging over my head with decorating projects.
I don’t hold myself out as a decorator, but clients I’ve staged for hire me to decorate their new homes because they love what I’ve done in staging the homes they’ve sold. So I do it, but I do it kicking and screaming all the way.
Donna, thanks so much for sharing your experiences, really appreciated!
Like you, many of my decorating projects have come from my staging clients who then want me to do the new home. After doing several of these I was very thankful I never went back to school to study interior design — something I had considered on and off for about 15 years.
Unless I really love the client, most often I’ll be “too busy” to take on a redesign project — though I still love color consultations, and home staging of course!
Debra, your no nonsense approach to both the design end and business end of business has inspired me to focus my business on staging for everyone of the reasons you describe and put my interior design business on the back burner. Our phone chat was so great that not only did I sign up for the two courses I said I would, my contractor brother was inspired too and said he would pay for my next course! I am so excited to learn all that you have to teach and pursue my passion of staging from an amazing mentor. Thanks again for picking up the phone today, you have already made a difference for me and I am so grateful.
Allison, it was so great talking with you today and I’m really excited that you’ve already taken action to dive into the Staging Diva Training Program. You have such a perfect background for this and I know you’re going to be a great success just from the energy I heard in your voice.
Thanks so much for commenting and for your feedback and I love that your brother is going to help you keep going with this. Take Course 4 next so you get the marketing piece of the puzzle. That will put you in great shape to take advantage of the “spring” real estate market, which for stagers gets going in January. You’ll have between now and then to get all your “ducks in a row” as they say!
Welcome again to the Staging Diva Community!
Donna, I agree. I get more excited about a staging a house than I do about re-design and today confirmed why. I got an e-mail from a staging client who had sold in 48 hours with 3 back up contracts waiting in the wings. She was excited, I was excited. I love real estate and I get a real buzz when properties I have consulted on or staged sell. You don’t get that with interior design.
Imogen, you are so right, thanks for commenting!
Debra, a great post! When I first started my home staging business it took a little while to get traction, so I added redesign and paint color consultations to my list of services. I agree with redesign they can take forever, but I have tapped into a good niche through my son’s school, stay at home moms. I have very elegant looking magnets on my car and people stop and talk to me and hire me almost on the spot. They don’t have big budgets but they want their home to look nice so I will go in and do one or two rooms at time. It’s fun, it’s easy and they are thrilled I could help them get curtains up!! Most people have the basics, couches, tables, but don’t have fun accessories or window treatments. However, great advice Debra, if you get a bad read on someone that you think is going to be difficult to work, absolutely say you are “too busy” to take on the job.
Now paint color consults, I love!!! Very easy money and it has a lot of impact usually. If you have an eye for staging/decorating you most likely have a good eye for picking colors. People reading this should know that most of the retailers will provide you with an entire color kit or color chip books and you can also order sheets of individual colors. Call the corporate number tell them what you do and they will put you in contact with a local rep that can supply these materials.
Good luck!
Jodi, Thanks so much for sharing your experience and recommendations, I know you will inspire others.
As for the designer kits from paint manufacturers, I agree that’s the way to get them. If you go to your local paint store they will charge you a fee, but you can usually negotiate getting them free from the manufacturer if you have a registered business.
Great article Debra. I was an Interior Design major in college. Never worked as one, but have always loved it. I agree with your ideas. I am beginning to come to the conclusion that my area of Richmond, VA is not accepting of Home Staging, so I think I will concentrate on ReDesign and color consults. I have had interest from REAs, investors, house flippers and even Interior Designers when I have one-on-ones. Never to hear from them again.
Now I know why a couple of stagers I know have shut down theirs businesses and gone on to other things. We’ll see how my idea of pushing redesign goes.
Debbie, thanks for sharing your experiences. I do have to ask you about having “one-on-ones, never to hear from them again” though. If this means you are going out and doing free estimates, that’s a big problem right there. That’s the quickest way to burnout and bankruptcy as a home stager because as soon as you’re doing a “one on one” with a potential client you are answering their most pressing questions. They have no need to pay for your services after that.
In the Staging Diva Training Program, I teach my students how to avoid this situation altogether so that if they’re in a client’s home, they know they are getting paid.
There is definitely a need and demand for home staging in Virginia, and in any market where real estate sells and people want to make more money from their home! It comes down to proper marketing and having the right target market.
Thanks for commenting Debbie and if you want some help with how to make staging work in your market, let me know!
Debra, great as always! I recently have created alliances with designers of various price points to refer my design clients to. I love, love, love staging for all of the reasons that you talk about and feel very similarly to Donna Dazzo on the design side. So, after years of taking design projects and feeling like something is always hanging over my head and stressing about if the client will like the selections or not, I just decided to refer that business out and focus solely on what I love, staging. Thank you for being the key to my success and ability to do what I absolutely love!!
Thanks so much Lori, and many congrats on being able to step back from what you didn’t like about redesign and focus just on staging! Too many of us are a afraid to turn down work, but in doing so we make room for the projects we really love to do. Good for you and thanks so much for commenting!!
Hello, I am in pursuit of a BS degree in business management however I have always been interested in decorating and interior design but I don’t want to get a degree in that field because I want to own a business. However, I have been looking into home staging for a while and am completely into it. I am not sure what it takes to get started without any experience. Any help you could give me would be extremely appreciated!
Audrey, I can totally relate to your comment and question. I have an MBA in Marketing and often considered studying interior design but didn’t feel the need for another degree. So glad I got into staging instead and with it came plenty of decorating projects too. I didn’t have any experience either when I started, other than working on my own homes. And I knew I had talent. It took me two years of total struggle to figure out how to make a really great living in home staging and that’s what I share with my students in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.
If you want a sample of what learning with me is like, you can grab a FREE pass to a mini course I’m teaching called “5 Simple Secrets to a Home Staging Business: How to Make Money Doing What You Love.”
You can get all the details here