Home Staging: Can I Have Some of That Style Savviness Please?

It struck me again while viewing a recently listed home (6468 Benvenue Avenue) how helpful staging can be. This particular house needed the skills of a makeover artist less than some, but nevertheless the stagers had done a grand job.

And there are scores of homes for whom the sprinkling of some stager’s magic dust can make the difference between a quick, profitable sale and a long painful wait to find a buyer.

To my mind there are two Oakland companies making an impression in my patch at the moment.

A home office staged by Scout (left) and Scout Home Hardware (right)

First up there’s Scout, which also runs a cool hardware/home-style store on Telegraph Avenue in Temescal. I’ve seen their work in many homes around Oakland and Berkeley and you start to know a “Scouted” home almost as soon as you walk in: the spare, shabby-chic look, a penchant for old maps and retro accessories — an antique manual typewriter perhaps — and lots of beautiful but impractical white linen upholstery.

(Other stagers have their signature look too. But the one thing you can be sure of is that all stagers use beds and sofas that are on the small side, to give the appearance of bigger rooms, and the color palette is always muted and inoffensive.)

Before and after: a living room staged by Nest Home Design.

Nest Home Design is also based in Oakland. Its website is stuffed with photos of their work, including some compelling “before” and “after” pictures and an amusing time-lapse video of one transformation of the living room of a home in the Oakland hills. Depending on the type of home, their aesthetic is cool and contemporary with some vintage pieces thrown into the mix.

I think it’s significant that stagers are increasingly doing makeovers for homeowners who have no intention of moving. Who doesn’t need a little interior design savvy now and then?

[Photo credits: www.scoutstaging.com and www.nesthomedesign.com]