"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 …
“If you are serious about making a career move to home staging, your first step should be to take training with Debra Gould. I am an interior designer and have owned and operated a successful interior design business. Debra’s home staging courses enabled me to wrap my head around the difference between interior design and staging. Yes, there is a difference! Staging Diva marketing training was so valuable to me. It empowered me to set goals and get moving to market my business!”
~ Jill Monczunski, Staging To Sell (Michigan)
Wondering if you should go to interior design school to become a home stager?
Debra Gould always wondered if she should have gone back to school to become an interior designer. However, not able to take 4 years off work to go to school full-time, she discovered home staging and realized 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”:
• Being a home stager you get lots more projects to work on because they are shorter term in nature. So, lots more variety.
• Being a home stager your clients give you creative control because they know they don’t really have to live with what you do to their homes. So, you get to be creative and make the decisions.
• Being a home stager you get interior redesign and color projects 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.
• Being a home stager you get to work with the kinds of people who wouldn’t normally hire an interior designer or decorator, in other words 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. Or, 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. I know 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
