Home Staging Cost: How much does it cost to stage a house?

When selling a home, realtors often stage their listing to increase its perceived value and attract potential buyers. Home staging is crucial to provide buyers with a feel of how the home would like with furniture. In fact, staged homes in the U.S. sell for over $70,000 compared to the same home unfurnished. Despite the clear value, home staging can be expensive and time taking as it involves consultation, logistical and decluttering costs.

In this article, we will discuss the detailed home staging cost breakdown. We will also see how the cost of virtual staging compares to that of traditional home staging.

Cost breakdown in traditional home staging

When staging a home traditionally, there’s usually different categories of costs involved. Let’s discuss each one:

1. Consultation cost: Before actually staging the home, you will have to consult in order to better understand your needs. Most stagers typically charge a flat fee of $150 to $600. This two hour process is important; it allows the stager to estimate the cost of staging a home.
2. Decluttering cost (optional): Unless you have a vacant house, you will have to declutter it. Our recommendation is to save costs and do this yourself, but sometimes it’s recommended to professionally declutter it. Prices different from state to state, but on average, it costs $50 to $100 per hour.
3. Staging cost: Finally, the staging home cost will set you back between $744 and $2845, according to this article. If you wish to rent the staged furniture, based on Redfin’s estimates, it can cost $500 to $600 per room.

However, it must be noted that these home staging cost ranges could vary depending on the project size, the number of rooms, the area of the house, and the material used when staging.

To summarize, here’s a table view of the costs involved:

Let’s compare the cost of physical home staging with virtual staging.

Cost of virtually staging a home

Virtual staging is a modern, budget-friendly alternative to traditional staging. Instead of physically decluttering and placing furniture in a home, designers add realistic furniture to photos of empty rooms. This method not only saves time and effort but also significantly reduces the overall cost of home staging. The tradeoff here is that there’s no physical material involved, so the buyer won’t be able to see the furniture in reality.

Designer Virtual Staging

Designers usually charge per image to virtually stage it. Here's what you can expect:

• Standard virtual staging: $20 to $40 per image
• Mid-tier services: $40 to $70 per image (includes premium styling, better rendering)
• High-end virtual staging: $100+ per image (luxury furniture, custom designs)

For example, platforms like BoxBrownie offer high-quality virtual staging at just $24 per image with a 48-hour turnaround. The benefit here is not only the cost savings, but the ability to easily request for revisions.

In summary, let’s say you’re virtually staging 10 rooms, your total cost of staging a home would be just $240, compared to thousands spent on traditional staging.

Virtual Staging AI

Even more modern than designer virtual staging, is the role of virtual staging using AI. Realtors these days usually use AI to virtually stage listings almost instantly with as many revisions as they like at a fraction’s cost. Unlike traditional staging, there is no cost breakdown, as there’s no hard labour involved in moving furniture, decluttering spaces, or renting furniture.

For instance, Desiome allows you to virtually stage your home using AI. It costs as low as $0.4 per render, that’s only $4 for 10 images of your home. The best part is that it’s instant, and you can try out different furniture styles for a broader appeal of your space.

Realtors and homeowners typically choose Virtual Staging AI to get instant results (not days or weeks!) and not worry about spending thousands of dollars.

Summary

We discussed the different components of home staging cost, if it’s done traditionally. Then, we compared it with the cost of virtually staging a home using either a designer or AI. Our recommendation is that you should definitely stage your home. But first, use convenient services such as virtual staging AI to see if it does the trick.

Here’s a summary of different costs: