Home staging is a relatively new concept in American real estate. Interior design has been around for generations. Still, there are many misconceptions about these two disciplines. For example, a lot of people think that home staging and interior design are the same thing. They are not.
CityHome Collective is a real estate and interior design firm in Salt Lake City, Utah. One of the ways they distinguish between home staging and interior design is intent. If you are staging a home, your intent is to eventually leave. After all, you are putting the house up for sale. If you are pursuing interior design, it is because you intend to stay in the home.
Looking at intent draws a very clear distinction between home staging and interior design. But let us not stop there. Let’s unpack these two decorating disciplines a bit further.
Staging a Home for Sale
Again, the whole intent of staging is to sell and move on. The principle is the same whether you’re selling a condo in Salt Lake City or a single-family home in Chicago. You intend to leave at some point in the near future. But why stage the home? Why go through the time and expense of preparing a home you intend to leave?
The good folks at CityHome Collective say it is all about presentation. They say that home buyers try to imagine themselves living in those homes they tour. That’s why you hear them talking about things like which child would get which bedroom and how well their furniture would fit in the living room.
Staging is centered around the goal of presenting a home that people can easily imagine themselves living in. An experienced home stager knows to do things like clear out the clutter, address obvious repair needs, rearrange the furniture, and even modify the lighting.
Interior Design for the Long Term
Where staging is a short-term strategy for selling a home, interior design is a long-term strategy for making your house more enjoyable to live in. This long-term focus dictates that interior designers are working with entirely different goals. Interior design is not about stimulating a homeowner’s imagination. It is about making the homeowner feel at home.
The beauty of interior design is that it has virtually no limits. You might have one designer who specializes in a certain kind of home décor while another is a more free spirit without any defined limits. Their goals are the same. They work with homeowners to design comfortable, accommodating, and aesthetically pleasing spaces.
How They Affect Value
You might be interested to know that home staging and interior design can both affect the value of a home. However, results are not always uniform. That is why it is so important to choose a professional with a good reputation and years of experience.
Home staging is supposed to help sellers get maximum price. So in addition to sparking the imaginations of potential buyers, staging is also intended to present the property in the best possible light. A staging expert wants prospective buyers to walk away from a house being more than willing to make a good offer.
In theory, interior design increases property value too. We say ‘theory’ because sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. Sometimes homeowners and their designers settle on some sort of design scheme that most people would find unappealing. In such a case, the value of the property would decline.
Now you know the difference between home staging and interior design. They are two different disciplines seeking two different outcomes.