Home Décor

15 Best Home Staging Books

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When selling a home it’s all about looks and location. The process of staging can make or break a sale and draw attention from people who would’ve otherwise overlooked the property.

But learning to stage a home can be tough on your own. That’s why this post is perfect for any homeowner or house flipper looking to stage the perfect interior.

Each of these books covers different strategies and techniques but they’ll all help you sell and do it well.

Psychological Staging

Kristie Barnett is a well-known designer with her own site The Decorologist. Kristie compiles all of her knowledge into this one book to help homeowners sell with beauty.

Psychological Staging offers tips on different rooms, styles, and decorating techniques for selling. Kristie discusses the psychology of sales and how this fits into the process of selling a home & staging it just right.

Early chapters focus on what buyers want and how you can give it to them. You’ll learn about planning, decorating, and targeting specific audiences whether you’re selling to young or old, male or female(or both).

Colors, fabrics, and marketing techniques are all discussed from a psychological perspective. And if there’s anyone who knows about this stuff it’s Kristie Barnett.

I 100% recommend this book for anyone interested in staging. It delves deep into the mental components behind staging and how these ultimately affect the sale.

 

Feel at Home

The deeper reasons behind home staging can be understood by practicing in your own space. Feel at Home covers all these secret practices that you can put to good use in your own home to see results in the short term.

Over 160 pages Tori Toth shares her staging expertise to cover every aspect of the process. Cleaning, reorganizing, color matching, and targeting buyers to make them feel at home in their (ideally) soon-to-be home.

Some interesting parts of this book get into how sellers think about their property. This forces you to consider what exactly you’re doing with the home and what your goals are. Later chapters get into home selling skills and what you’ll need to focus on to make the sale.

This is short and sweet but well worth a read. Tori’s advice rings true for all homes and the idea of making a place feel home-y is perhaps the best advice you’ll ever get.

 

31 Days to a Staged Home

During the process of staging a home you’ll feel annoyed, frustrated, depressed, overjoyed, and a litany of other emotions. These emotions can all come from anxiety and nervousness of getting all the little details right.

31 Days to a Staged Home offers a step-by-step guide to staging for the complete beginner. For the price it’s exceptionally long with 224 pages of detailed guidelines for homeowners.

The writing is concise and easy to follow. It’s also incredibly detailed so it’s perfect for someone who knows little-to-nothing about staging a home. Each chapter has plenty of pictures to illustrate the process and you’ll learn many foolproof staging techniques along the way.

Ultimately you’ll use this guide to help you look at your interior with a fresh pair of eyes. Once you can see your home through the eyes of a potential buyer you’ll have a much keener sense of what to add, what to remove, and why staging is so darn important.

 

The Power of Staging

Andy Capelluto is a home design expert and she’s managed the International School of Staging since early 2004. She’s a leader in this field and she has the years of experience to back it up.

In her book The Power of Staging Andy shares practical advice for homeowners who want a clutter-free home for staging. This process can be stressful but it doesn’t have to be. Especially once you understand what staging is and how it works.

This book spans 200+ pages with individual chapters for exercises you can follow on your own. Cleaning, decluttering, repairing, decorating, and following a common checklist that every homeowner should have.

Once your home looks pretty it’ll be ready for selling.

But to get to that point you’ll need to pour in hours of blood, sweat, and tears. Andy’s book can help you get through that process tears-free.

 

Elements of Style: Designing a Home & a Life

Elements of Style: Designing a Home & a Life is a wonderfully advanced interior design book made for your average Joe or Jane.

The book gets its name from the extremely popular blog Elements of Style and is written by blogger Erin Gates. Inside you’ll find full-color photographs of beautiful interiors made to match and inspire.

Each chapter focuses on a different room in the house from the entryway to the home office, nursery, and even the backyard. Erin shares her advice along with plenty of photos to illustrate her points.

Anyone can glean some valuable advice from this book, even homeowners who just want to simply redecorate their interior. It’s packed full of practical advice and ideas that can help you stage a home for yourself or others.

 

Home Staging For Dummies

A more recent publication is Home Staging For Dummies, one heck of a book packed with tips for homeowners looking to sell.

Inside you’ll find over 370 pages of colloquial writing and simple tips that anyone can follow. You’ll learn about the psychology of people looking to buy homes and what this psychology means when staging an interior.

Both homeowners and real estate agents can take away some great points from this writing. Furniture positions, spacious areas, walking paths and even quality photography all help to sell a home to potential buyers.

And remember it’s always on you to make sure people like the home during tours. Staging is merely one part of that, and the other psychological secrets to selling are littered throughout this tremendous book.

 

Home Staging That Works

To really draw attention to your home you’ll need to learn what interior designers know about staging. But instead of paying for a 4-year degree there’s a much cheaper and easier solution.

Home Staging That Works covers all the pain points of a home that turn off buyers. You’ll learn how to properly stage furniture and clear space in rooms to create a home living vibe during tours.

It’s always possible to pay a consultant to help you stage your home. But why not save money and do it yourself? This book is 220 pages long so while it is a lengthy read, it also has absolutely everything you’ll need to know about staging on your own.

You’ll learn how to look at each room analytically from the perspective of a potential buyer. This includes curb appeal, exterior design, lawn care, and so many other little features you wouldn’t think about.

With the tips in this book you can take your home from basic to beautiful in a few weeks.

 

Styled: Secrets for Arranging Rooms

Styled: Secrets for Arranging Rooms is great for staging, but it’s also a fantastic guide for anyone who simply wants to redecorate their home.

A complete redesign can take weeks if not months of time and planning. But making small stylized tweaks only takes a few hours at most. And these tweaks can make a big impact on your final home design.

You’ll learn how to study the room and find pieces that don’t fit, or perhaps fit awkwardly in their current position. These ideas can apply to staging but also to general home decorating.

If you’re on a budget then this book is perfect to get your home looking brand new.

 

Habitat: The Field Guide to Decorating

Another much more detailed style-oriented book is Habitat: The Field Guide to Decorating.

This one is written by home designer & blogger Lauren Liess who has years of experience in the field. Inside this book you’ll learn about the fundamentals of mixing & matching colors, fabrics, textures, and pieces of furniture together in one room.

Each chapter includes plenty of examples with photographs to keep you on track. These examples are easy to consume and they’ll keep your attention where it belongs: on ideas that can make each room even better through small tweaks.

Decorating is one aspect of home staging, but it’s really just a part of a much bigger home experience. This book covers all the fundamentals of design including lighting, style, fabrics, and furniture arrangement.

If you love home design and want practical decorating solutions you’ll tear through this book cover to cover.

 

Home Staging: The Winning Way to Sell Your House for More Money

The sales side of staging can be a deterrent for some people. However that’s really what staging is all about, and whether you have sales experience or not you must know the importance of great first impressions.

Home Staging: The Winning Way to Sell Your House for More Money talks about the selling side of staging and how it can affect your bottom line. Staged homes always sell faster and usually sell for more.

If you can harness the ideas behind staging you’ll have a much smoother selling process.

In this book you’ll learn about staging as a concept and why it has such a powerful psychological effect. You’ll learn how to focus on the home’s strong points by accentuating certain rooms with lighting and furniture.

Trimming bushes, planting flowers, and keeping the home clutter-free are just a few small techniques you can follow. But this 240-page book has a whole lot more about why staging works and what you can do to help sell homes.

 

Home Staging Like A Pro

It’s possible to learn all the tricks of the trade without hiring a professional stager. Home Staging Like A Pro can teach you everything you need to sell your home without paying for a 3rd party consultant.

The truth is that home staging can be a very simple process. The difficulty isn’t in physically doing the work, but rather understanding what work needs to be done to actually draw attention. That’s where this book comes in.

Your goal isn’t to design a beautiful decor, but rather to highlight what could be decorated in your home.

This book covers everything about first impressions and how to really “open up” your largest rooms. Other chapters cover a home’s layout and how you can make the most with the space you’ve got.

This is a real short book with only 95 pages but they’re all full of actionable techniques. If you’re looking to stage your home on the cheap this is the book you need by your side.

 

Home Staging for Profit

Here’s a slightly different approach to home staging for people who might want to sell their services in the neighborhood. Home Staging for Profit by Barbara Jennings teaches you how to look at home staging as more than just a sales tactic.

This detailed manual looks at home staging as a side job that can help you pull some extra dough each month. From these lessons you’ll learn how to interact with sellers rather than buyers, and you’ll learn how to communicate in a way that makes sense to most homeowners.

Each chapter covers a different topic and throughout this book you’ll learn which questions to ask and how to solve certain problems for the seller. Your job is to become a problem solver for people who simply don’t have the time to learn home staging.

You should already have some experience with staging before picking up this book. You can start as a newbie but it’s really a guide for people who want to move from staging their own homes into staging other homes for profit.

 

Getting Paid for Home Staging

Another related book is Getting Paid for Home Staging also by Barbara Jennings. You might consider this a follow-up resource for anyone seriously interested in home staging as a side job.

The lessons in this book talk about earning what you’re worth and pushing your services to the right audience. Barbara has years of experience as a home staging expert and has written many books on this topic. She can help anyone learn to stage a home and sell that knowledge for profit.

But running a business is no easy task. Not everyone has the chops to work for themselves and market their skills, let alone getting paid for the work. That’s where this book comes in.

Over 200 pages you’ll learn how to charge, what to charge, and how to make sure you get paid. Other chapters cover how to handle clients and dealing with the stubborn clients you’ll undoubtedly run into.

If you’re seriously interested in home staging as a side gig then pick up this book. It’s invaluable to the aspiring businesswoman who wants to get into home staging but doesn’t want to be taken for a ride along the way.

 

Home Staging Handbook

The Home Staging Handbook compiles advice from interior designers and real estate agents to offer a compendium of staging tips & tricks.

You may be surprised to learn this book is only 106 pages long. But in those pages you’ll find brief interviews with staging professionals, advice from designers, and tips garnered from years of experience in the housing market.

You’ll learn how to decorate and brighten certain rooms to draw attention to the home’s best features. This includes details on colors, highlights, and even furniture arrangements that bring a “completed” look to the home.

Everything in this book has been covered elsewhere but it’s condensed much tighter into a quicker read. If you want a book that gets right to the point and moves fast then this is the one for you.

 

Advanced Redesign

Lastly we have another book from Barbara Jennings covering more detailed topics of home design. In Advanced Redesign you’ll learn how to maximize your profits through staging by offering the best experience possible.

These ideas carry into every home and even office settings. The goal of home staging is to create a certain mood or feeling in the environment. These ideas can apply everywhere no matter what space you’re designing.

Barbara’s books tend to spread out a lot and they’re mostly geared towards homeowners. If you’re interested in that topic area then I recommend looking through her publications to see what else she offers.

But generally speaking, all the books in this post are fantastic intros for the average homeowner who just wants to stage an interior.

I’d still say that Psychological Staging is one of the best books you can get with so much detail on every topic imaginable. As a companion for more practical advice I also recommend the Elements of Style design book.

However these are only two my personal favorites. All the books in this list can impart unique ideas for staging and designing homes, it’s just about finding a title that rings true with your needs & budget.

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