Want to know why good home staging isn’t cheap? Let’s talk about a fake artichoke…
The least expensive large, realistic faux artichokes I could find, retail for approximately $8.50-$12… Each.
One artichoke in a bowl looks ridiculous. Three look lonely.
To fill a generously sized bowl so it looks lush and intentional? I recently used 10. And, for the record, I had already added filler to the bottom of the bowl so I wouldn’t need even more of them. At $8.50–$12 each, that’s $85 – $120 worth of fake vegetables. And we haven’t even bought the bowl yet!
This is something people often don’t realize about home staging: Accessories are expensive. And this applies to occupied homes, too. You may already own the sofas, beds and dining table, but making a home feel finished, current and beautifully presented can require a surprising amount of additional inventory.
Take bookshelves. A beautifully styled bookcase doesn’t require one vase, three books and a hopeful little plant. It can take dozens of individual pieces—books, vessels, bowls, sculptural objects, greenery and boxes—to create the balance, scale and visual interest that make large built-ins look properly finished, and with enough empty space to show capacity for a new owner’s items, but not bare.
A $20 vase doesn’t sound expensive. Neither does a $12 book. Or a $25 – $40 decorative object. But multiply that by 30, 40 or 50 pieces and suddenly there can be more than a thousand dollars, sitting on one wall.
Then there’s artwork. Have you looked at the price of large-scale artwork lately? A 16 × 20 print isn’t going to do much over your average 6.5-7-foot sofa or on a soaring two-storey wall. Homes need appropriately scaled artwork, mirrors and décor—and appropriately scaled pieces come with appropriately scaled price tags.
Then we have $30-$40 pillows. $50-$60 Throws. $80 Lamps. $5 Greenery stems. $150 – $200 Bedding. $10 Towels. $50 Trays. $20 – $80 Vessels. $10 – 50 Books. $50 set of Candlesticks. And, apparently, an alarming number of fake vegetables.
None of these things necessarily sounds terribly expensive on its own. That’s the trick.
It’s $35 here. $60 there. $150 for a mirror. $300 for a large piece of artwork. Seven pillows in one living room. Three lamps. Two large trees. Thirty decorative books. And fifteen fake artichokes.
Suddenly, there can be thousands of dollars worth of accessories in a home before a single piece of additional furniture comes through the door. And having furniture in a home isn’t the same as having furniture that presents the home effectively.
A perfectly matching room full of oversized dark leather furniture may have cost a considerable amount of money. That doesn’t necessarily mean it will photograph well, make the room feel spacious or help buyers connect with the property. Sometimes existing furniture can be rearranged and edited. Sometimes strategic pieces need to be added. And sometimes the stager walks into a room containing an entire matching furniture suite and quietly wonders what she did in a previous life to deserve this.
Once the furniture plan is right, the transformation continues in the layers. It’s the artwork that gives an empty wall the right scale. The lamps that improve the light and balance a room. The pillows that connect the colour palette. The greenery that brings life to an otherwise sterile space. The accessories that make enormous built-ins feel intentional rather than empty. And yes, the bowl of artichokes that makes a huge kitchen island feel properly styled.
Good staging should look effortless. You should feel that the home looks polished, complete and appropriate for its price point. But behind that effortless appearance can be hundreds of individual pieces and thousands of dollars of inventory.
So the next time you see a beautifully staged home and wonder why professional home staging isn’t cheap…
Count the artichokes.
