When listing a house for sale or rent many know that staging can help sell the property faster and for a higher price. Nonetheless the prohibitive cost of home staging makes some home owners and real estate professionals hesitant to stage a property and makes them consider virtual staging instead. One often asked question in this context is how much does virtual staging cost.
In this article we will answer this question by firstly looking at the benefits of (virtual) staging and how to calculate the potential return on investment (ROI), different options for home staging and virtual staging, the cost of these options and which option makes the most sense for which scenario. At the end we’ll take a look at the most reputable virtual staging companies for real estate and our Virtual Staging Review recommendations.
What are the benefits of virtual staging?
The first question to consider when thinking about how much money to spend on virtual staging or home staging is what benefit one can expect from staging a property. There have been numerous studies on this topic including the yearly profile of home staging by the National Association of Realtors which surfaces a few interesting points:
- 81% of buyer’s agents said that staging a home made it easier for buyers to visualize the property as a future home.
- The most important rooms to stage from a buyer's perspective are the living room, main bedroom and the kitchen.
- 73% of agents reported that TV shows that displayed the buying process set unrealistic expectations
Another interesting study by Home Staging Resources (admittedly a potentially biased source) found that 85% of the staged houses sold for between 6 - 25% more than unstaged houses in the same market. And according to this Forbes article 95% of staged homes sell in 11 days or less making it 87% faster than the average.
Now that we’ve established the benefits of staging, let’s take a look at the different options you have to stage a house.
Different options for staging in real estate
When you’re considering to stage a house there are three main options:
- Traditional home staging with real furniture
- Virtual staging by designers
- Virtual staging by AI
Let’s take a more detailed look at the different options.
Traditional home staging
Traditional home staging involves bringing real furniture into the property. Most of the time, the furniture is rented from a staging company but for certain luxury properties the furniture is sometimes also bought directly so the house can be sold furnished.
In all major cities a thriving market of home staging companies exists, in more rural areas there are often just one or two home staging companies available. Some seller agents also offer to do the home staging for their clients as an additional service.
The major advantage of traditional home staging is that the property not only looks good in pictures online but buyers will have the same experience once they see the property in real life for a showing. Virtual staging only enhances the property online and buyers might feel misled or disappointed once they see the property in real life without the furniture.
This way traditional home staging can also help shift attention away from downsides of a property during a showing. For example, by adding more mirrors properties appear more spacious.
The main drawback of physical home staging is the price which can be orders of magnitudes higher than for virtual staging. Moreover, as real furniture needs to be delivered and assembled, traditional home staging can require two to three weeks of notice in advance depending on the availability of home staging services. This means that especially during the high season this can really push back timelines.
Virtual staging
Nowadays over 90% of buyers search for properties online according to this study by the National Association of Realtors. This combined with the fact that advancements in computer technology made it possible to edit real estate photos in a realistic looking manner explains why virtual staging has gained a lot of popularity over the past 10 years or so.
When virtual staging was first introduced over 10 years ago the results were not very realistic. Take a look at this property in Massachusetts for example.
In 2024 it became even hard for real estate professionals to distinguish between photos with real furniture and virtually staged photos.
This photo was virtually staged by Virtual Staging Solutions in 24 hours for $79.
Even though virtual staging isn’t as convincing as traditional home staging once buyers step into the property (you can still show a picture of the staged room on an iPad to help buyers match empty rooms to pictures they saw online), it helps generate first interest in buyers that are shopping for properties online to book a showing appointment. Moreover virtual staging comes at a fraction of the cost of traditional home staging.
Up until 2023 virtual staging had to be done by human designers that manually placed the furniture items in the photos with software like Photoshop. Many virtual staging agencies hired staff overseas to outsource this and be able to offer cheap virtual staging services.
Recently, advancements in computer technology and AI have enabled another revolution in home staging: virtual staging by AI. For this type of virtual staging no human designers are required. Clients just upload their image, choose how they want it staged, and voilà they get the same type of result as they would have gotten from a human designer within seconds from AI. This makes virtual staging even more accessible as AI virtual staging only costs around $1 per image.
This photo was virtually staged by Virtual Staging AI in 15 seconds for $1.
Other services for real estate photo editing to consider
Besides virtual staging there exist a few other image editing services for real estate that need to be considered when looking to compare the cost of traditional home staging vs virtual staging cost. These services include:
- Decluttering: If a property has a lot of junk in it or outdated furniture you need to order a virtual decluttering to get it removed before you can use virtual staging to add new furniture.
- Virtual renovation: While virtual staging just adds furniture to an existing room without changing the walls or the floor, virtual renovation includes changes to structural elements as well. It helps to show what a renovation could turn a property into.
- Wall repainting: If you just require a more modern wall color a wall repainting service could be a good choice.
- Day to dusk: Outdoor photos of the property can gain a lot in attractiveness by changing the time of the day from day to dusk to get that beautiful twilight lighting. A virtual day to dusk service can change the time of the day to dusk virtually. This way your real estate photographer doesn’t need to come twice to shoot the property.
- Blue sky green grass: The curb appeal of a property can be improved by a lot by turning brown grass into green grass and turning a cloudy day into a day with a beautiful blue sky.
Now that we have a good overview over the different types of services that are available let’s take a closer look at the cost and how this impacts your ROI.
Cost of traditional home staging
The cost of home staging with real furniture depends on many factors, mainly three:
- How large is the property?
The more rooms a property has, the more design work needs to be done and the more furniture needs to be rented. If the house already contains furniture that can be used for staging purposes the cost is lower.
- How fast does the house sell?
The cost of home staging typically consists of two components: a one-time consultation and setup fee as well as a monthly furniture rental fee. The longer your property sits on the market, the longer is the rental period and subsequently the higher your rental cost.
- The level of quality you are looking
Even within traditional home staging there is a great variety of quality levels between interior designers charging $1,000 and more per hour and only recommending the highest quality furniture which is expensive to rent compared to more budget friendly designers that often offer fixed prices for properties in certain square footage ranges. Which option is best for you depends a lot on the price range of the property you're selling and how competitive your local market is.
To give you an idea on the average cost for home staging: an initial two hour consultation costs anywhere between $150 and $600 and the furniture rental for one room for one month is about $500 per month. A good rule of thumb is to aim to spend no more than 1% of the property price on home staging.
Websites like houzz.com help finding a home staging professional.
Cost of virtual staging
The cost of virtual staging is very different depending on whether it is performed by a designer or by AI.
Prices for virtual staging by a designer start at around $10 per photo if you search for a graphic design freelancer from overseas on platforms like Upwork or Fiverr. The drawback of working with individual designers directly is that they have a great difference in terms of quality and reliability as there is no quality control department. They might also not be familiar with style and design trends in your local market. Therefore you might have to try a few before you find one that fits your needs.
A more convenient but also more expensive way would be to use an agency like BoxBrownie or Styldod. These companies have designers on staff and their own dedicated quality control department that checks every image before they get sent back to you. This way you can be rest assured that the images meet at least a minimum quality standard. Prices for virtual staging agencies start at around $20 for agencies from overseas and prices for American virtual staging agencies start at around $50 per photo.
Since the launch of Virtual Staging AI, a startup from the Harvard Innovation Lab that pioneered the AI staging category, virtual staging by AI has gained a lot of popularity and is expected to take an even bigger market share in 2024 and beyond. The main advantages of it are the low price point of only about $1 per image, the fast turnaround time of about 10 to 20 seconds and the ease of use: just upload a picture, tell the AI what type of furniture you want and a moment later you get the results.
With the click of a button you can virtually stage a room by AI.
Is virtual staging worth the cost?
To answer this question we need to take a look at the ROI of the investment into high quality virtual staging.
According to The Ascent, the average home price in the United States in Q3 2023 is $431,000. According to Stuccco, their average virtual staging order is 6 photos for $204. The same six photos would be $18 with Virtual Staging AI’s basic plan.
The average home price in the US is above $400k.
If we compare these costs to a likely 6% to 25% higher sales price which would equal between $25k and $107k in additional return we get a return on the investment in virtual staging between 120x and 5900x. This goes to show that virtually staging a property is very likely a highly ROI positive investment.
Now that we have hopefully convinced you that virtual staging makes sense for you, let’s take a closer look at how it works and what companies we recommend.
How does virtual staging work?
The process to get your photos virtually staged is pretty simple. It all starts with getting your listing photos. We recommend getting professionally done photos by a real estate photographer which you can get for as low as $150 per property. But even if you choose to do the photos yourself with your iPhone you can still use virtual staging to increase the appeal of your photos.
Once you have your photos the next step is to decide on a virtual staging service. We have published an extensive review of the best virtual staging companies which you can find here.
Depending on your budget our recommendations are:
- Fastest and most affordable: Virtual Staging AI (starts at $18 for 6 photos, as low as $0.25/photo, 20 seconds turnaround time)
- Highest quality: Stuccco ($29/photo, 24 hours turnaround time)
- Runner-up: Styldod ($23/photo, $16/photo for 8 photos or more, 48 hours turnaround time)
The virtual staging company then needs some information from you on how to stage the images, mainly which room type they are and what kind of furniture you would like to get added.
Styldod offers eight different furniture styles to choose from
Within the specified turnaround time you will then get the staged images back which you can use on your listing. All three recommended companies offer unlimited free revisions so if something shouldn’t live up to your expectations you can simply get it redone.
Three most important tips for virtual staging
We have a full article about our best tips for virtual staging but here are our three most important recommendations.
Always disclose the use of virtual staging
Potential buyers should always be aware that virtual staging was used to enhance the listing photos before they see the property in real life. This is to avoid disappointment when they see an empty house that looks beautifully furnished online. Our recommendation is to always post both the virtually staged photo as well as the photo of the empty room on your listing. Moreover some MLS require you to add a “Virtual Staging” watermark on the virtually staged photos or to add a note in the listing description that some photos were virtually staged.
This photo contains a “Virtually Staged” watermark in the top left corner to disclose that the image was edited.
Show what the property can be, not what it can’t
The goal of virtual staging is to help buyers visualize themselves living in the property. Therefore you should make sure that all the changes that have been made in the edited photos can actually be realized. Changing the view outside the window onto the next building to a beach view is not something that the buyers will appreciate.
Keep your target audience in mind
When deciding how to virtually stage a property you should always keep your buyer persona in mind and stage for them and their lifestyle and not according to your own preference. You should also avoid applying the newest design trends too much and instead go for more of a timeless interior design.
