"I believe each house has a soul, an essence that one connects with. I have a passion for decorating and designing which began when I was a child. I would drive my parents …
“The Staging Diva Program allowed me to confidently move into home staging after being in business designing eco-friendly home decor. Re-design of a space using many of the client’s own furnishings is both a budget-friendly and earth-friendly way to go. This approach is completely in line with my vision for my business.”
~ Lois Ward, goodlines Inc. (Ontario)
It’s not necessary to go to design school to learn home staging
Even if you have the raw talent to be a home stager and you love decorating, you may wonder whether you need to return to school to learn home staging.
Debra Gould always wondered if she should have gone back to school to become an interior designer. However, she wasn’t able to take 4 years off work to go to school full-time, and when she discovered home staging, she realized that she didn’t need interior design training because she had natural decorating talent.
Here’s Debra’s account of what she learned being a Professional Home Stager instead of being an “Interior Designer”:
- As a home stager, you get far more projects to work on because they are shorter term in nature. This means much more variety.
- As a home stager, your clients give you creative control because they know they don’t have to live with what you do to their homes. You get to be creative and make the decisions.
- As a home stager, you get projects for interior redesign and color consulting because your staging clients love what you do with the house they’re selling and ask you to work on the one they’re moving into.
- As a home stager, you get to work with people who wouldn’t normally hire an interior designer or decorator, which means a much larger target market.
The other important thing I learned is that I would have hated being an interior designer!
It’s really frustrating doing a beautiful room only to see your client later clutter it up with additions that clash with everything you’ve done. It’s also hard having to sit there for hours while they can’t decide which fabric they want to pick.
I love having the creative control I get from staging houses. I get to execute my vision because clients realize I’m decorating their house to sell, not for them to live in it. There is no way I could have done hundreds of homes in so short a period with an interior design degree fresh out of school.
Granted, because I’ve never gone through an Interior Design program, (or ever taken an interior design or color course!), I can’t tell you if a chair is Louis the XVI, or draw plans to build an addition off the back of a house, but I don’t miss having those skills!
The kind of people that hire me (upper middle class, usually professionals) don’t really care!
They hire me because they know I’m an expert in decorating a house to sell because they’ve visited my websites, they’ve heard about me from their neighbors or real estate agents, or they’ve read about Six Elements or Staging Diva in the media.
For the things I don’t know, I’d happily refer them to a trained interior designer! I know they have many skills that I don’t. But like I said, I learned I wouldn’t want to be an interior designer so that’s OK by me. And, it was a relief to finally let go of all the wondering about it!
Related Reading:
> California Interior Designer Finds Success as Home Stager
> Recession Proofing Your Interior Design or Decorating Business
