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Home Staging with Vignettes by Jackie Riley

When you start your home staging business you can choose to do "consultation only" for a while until your home staging business gets more established; or you can jump right in to "hands-on" home staging with your own furniture and accessories.

You can add furniture leasing to your home staging services, but you don't have to. You can choose to only do vignettes when you stage houses, with no large pieces of furniture.

Vignettes can be very effective and are easy to put together. The possibilities are endless, but the idea is always to "set the scene" for the buyer to envision enjoying the home.

For example, in a vacant house you can set up a small bistro set in the kitchen or breakfast nook. Set the table as “tea for two.” Then put some pretty towels in the bathroom with a luxurious basket of bath items. Put some fruit and flowers on the kitchen table. Place an air mattress on boxes with beautiful bedding in the master bedroom. Place a beautiful book on the bed (a Sherlock Holmes novel or classic literature) with a nice pair of reading glasses. Viola! A well staged house!

Again, the idea is to set up in the buyer’s mind all the wonderful experiences just waiting for him or her . . . that this house will create a desirable lifestyle. You can accomplish this by staging houses with vignettes such as the scenes I mentioned above. This way you don’t have to use very large pieces to get the job done. You can rent the vignette pieces to your client and since its smaller scale you can most likely move the items without hiring movers. In addition, storage will be easy.

Staging houses with vignettes is a great time to really get creative. What else can you think of that would make a good vignette? Make sure you appeal to a wide range of buyers and portray an enviable lifestyle. Don't be too "taste specific" with your choices. If you're using a book in your vignette, choose a light 'beach read' bestseller rather than the heavy stuff - unless you're specifically targeting intellectuals. An Ivy League town, perhaps? The key is to know who your market is and make appropriate choices.

Your staged homes will outshine all the others in the buyers' eyes.

 

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