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If you haven’t shopped for virtual staging software lately, you might be in for a bit of a shock. Many apps that used to offer Realtors an easy-to-use, DIY virtual staging platform now just sell done-for-you professional virtual staging—usually with a higher price tag. While that might work for teams and brokerages with big budgets, many agents still want to get their hands dirty and do their own virtual staging.
That’s why we decided to update our guide to the best virtual staging software and done-for-you professional staging options on the market in 2023. We cover pricing, design quality, and examples of virtual staging from each provider. We also worked with our friends at Douglas Elliman and other brokerages to get some expert virtual staging tips from top listing agents.
As an added bonus, you can download our top 10 staging tips for free:
What Is Virtual Staging?
Virtual staging is the affordable, digital version of home staging—a property marketing strategy where Realtors furnish and decorate homes for sale to make them more appealing to potential buyers. Instead of renting furniture and art to stage a listing, virtual staging allows Realtors to decorate photos of vacant homes with digital renderings of furniture, art, and even plants.
What’s the Difference Between Virtual Staging Software & Professional Virtual Staging?
There are two ways to get your listing virtually staged in 2023:
DIY Virtual Staging Software
The first way to get your listing digitally staged is to use virtual staging software to pick the furniture you want to use and place it in your listing photos. This is usually the more affordable option, but can be challenging if you’re not used to working with design software.
Done-for-you Professional Virtual Staging
The second and most popular way to get listings virtually staged is to hire a virtual staging professional to pick the furniture for you and place it in your photos. This option is generally more expensive, but the results will almost always look more professional.
How Much Does Virtual Staging Software Cost?
Instead of a monthly fee like most software-as-a-service products, virtual staging is generally priced by the image. Pricing for virtual staging software can range from $7 per image for DIY software to $49 to $199 per image for professional staging services.
Is Virtual Staging Worth the Price?
Yes. Absolutely. I can’t even count the number of times I toured homes with buyers who had a hard time visualizing themselves living in empty listings. Out of desperation, one agent I worked with actually put tape down on the floors just to show her customers that they could, in fact, fit a king-sized bed in the bedroom.
Virtual staging solves this problem. Instead of resorting to tape on the floor or waxing poetic about how a room could look with stylish furniture, you pull up virtually staged pictures on your iPad and show them. If you have really picky buyers, you can even stage the same room in different themes.
Since National Association of Realtors (NAR) 2023 statistics show that the average price agents pay for traditional home staging is an eye-watering $1,500, virtual staging is a relative bargain—even at $69 per image.
The Best Virtual Staging Software for 2023
Here are our picks for the best virtual staging software and professional staging for 2023.
| Virtual Staging Software | Best For | Price per Image | DIY or Professional? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apply Design (Best Overall) |
High-quality and affordable DIY virtual staging | $7-$10 per image | DIY |
| BoxBrownie (Best Value) |
Low price-to-quality ratio | $24 per image | Pro staging |
| Styldod (Best Budget Option) |
Non DIYers on a budget | $16 per image | Pro staging |
| roOomy (Best Overall) |
High-quality, pro virtual staging | $49-$69 per image | Pro staging |
| Hasten | High-end pro virtual staging | Call for pricing | Pro staging |
| Spotless Agency | High-quality images | $79-$199 per image | Pro staging |
Apply Design: Highest-quality DIY Option
What We Love About Apply Design
A relatively new virtual staging software startup, Apply Design is an easy-to-use app that allows anyone to quickly stage their listings. Apply Design is one of the only virtual staging apps on the market that still allows agents to do their own virtual staging. It’s also very easy to use, and includes a large number of tasteful, high-quality renderings of furniture, art, lighting, rugs, plants, and other home furnishings.
Our Favorite Features:
One very helpful feature is that the furnishings are grouped into room bundles—collections of furniture, art, and other furnishings that all work well together. If you don’t have a savvy eye for interior design, they make it easy to pick out furnishings that work well together.
Can’t convince your seller to empty the rooms you want to virtually stage? Just use Apply Design’s artificial intelligence (AI) Furniture Removal Tool and voila—all the clutter will be erased from your image, leaving you with an empty room to stage.
You can even stage spherical panoramic pictures with Apply Design. Just upload your 360-degree images from your device and start adding furniture and art.
Drawbacks to Using Apply Design
We were kind of hoping for more high-end furniture options brand names like West Elm, Pottery Barn, and Design Within Reach. They have some great options already, but more would be great!
Example Virtual Staging From Apply Design
Visit Apply Design
BoxBrownie: The Disruptor With an Incredible Price-to-Quality Ratio
What We Love About BoxBrownie
If you’ve been to an NAR or Inman conference in the last few years, then chances are you already know what BoxBrownie is. The friendly Aussies who run BoxBrownie have been trying to disrupt the virtual staging industry for years. We think they’ve finally done it. Photorealistic virtual staging images for $24 each is well below the industry average.
While the image quality might not be quite as striking as Hasten or other high-end services, it gets the job done at a price most agents can afford.
Our Favorite Features
One incredible benefit of using BoxBrownie for virtual staging is that they offer free changes to your images for up to two months. They won’t restage the entire room for you, but you can request that they swap out a chair or rearrange furniture. Perfect for picky homeowners!
BoxBrownie also offers a 48-hour turnaround time for your images. It’s not the absolute fastest budget pick on this list (for that, scroll down to Styldod), but if you’re in a time crunch or just want to get your staged images up on Zillow faster, BoxBrownie is a decent choice.
Drawbacks to Using BoxBrownie
While the quality of BoxBrownie’s images are comparable to Apply Design and Spotless Agency, their interior design leaves a little something to be desired. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not tacky—but it just doesn’t feel quite as stylish as other options.
Example Virtual Staging From BoxBrownie
Visit BoxBrownie
Styldod: Best Budget Option
What We Love About Styldod
We’ve had our eye on Styldod for years now, but their image quality always seemed to be lower than competitors like BoxBrownie. This year they seem to have upped their image quality, so we’re including them on our list.
Why do we love them? In a word—the price! Starting at just $16 per image, Styldod is the most affordable virtual staging service we know of. While the image quality is not quite at the same level as competitors, if you’re on a budget and don’t need incredibly realistic renderings, Styldod is still a good option.
Our Favorite Features
Like BoxBrownie, Styldod offers unlimited free revisions to your images.
If you need images quickly, Styldod can get them to you faster than BoxBrownie.
Drawbacks to Using Styldod
The images Styldod produces are not quite as realistic as BoxBrownie. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not terrible, but some are noticeably fake-looking. If you just want a fast turnaround time and aren’t too concerned about image quality, Styldod is still a good option.
Example Virtual Staging From Styldod
Visit Styldod
roOomy: Nice Image Quality With Real-life Furniture
What We Love About roOomy
While their image quality might not be quite as photorealistic as Hasten, roOomy offers one killer feature that leaves the others in the dust—they use actual furniture your clients can buy to do their home staging.
Our Favorite Feature
Instead of cheesy-looking models of knockoff Eames chairs, roOomy lets you stage your listing with photorealistic models of furniture your customers can actually buy. Even better, if you get to know your buyers well enough, you just might be able to stage an empty room with furniture they already own. So if you know they have a specific couch from, say, Pottery Barn, you can show them a staged photo with their couch in it.
Drawbacks to Using roOomy
While roOomy has great furniture options and their designers produce high-quality images, they recently discontinued their free app. We think this is something agents would happily pay for, so we hope they bring it back!
Example Virtual Staging From roOomy
Visit roOomy
Hasten: The Gucci of Virtual Staging?
What We Love About Hasten
Hasten is a high-end virtual staging and 3D rendering company that works with some of Manhattan’s top developers and brokerages.
They have the best image quality and interior design taste that we know of among staging service providers. While they don’t offer virtual staging software for agents, they consistently put out photorealistic virtual staging images with stunning interior design.
Drawbacks to Using Hasten
Since Hasten doesn’t list pricing for their services and seems to only work with high-end brokerages, we’re going to assume they are, shall we say, not cheap. That said, if you want the best, it couldn’t hurt to call.
Example Virtual Staging From Hasten
Visit Hasten
Spotless Agency: Highly Realistic Images at a Premium
What We Love About Spotless Agency
Another relative newcomer to the virtual staging space, Spotless Agency offers drop-dead gorgeous virtual staging, but at a slightly higher price. Spotless has very stylish options for furnishing that look a bit nicer than many competitors, and their professional stagers have great taste.
Drawbacks to Using Spotless Agency
Coming in at a hefty $79 per image with only one round of edits, Spotless is more than double the price of BoxBrownie. So it’s up to you (and your listing marketing budget) to decide if their image quality is twice as good.
Example Virtual Staging From Spotless Agency
Visit Spotless Agency
Related Article
Sean’s Ultimate Real Estate Listing Marketing Plan (PDF Checklist)
7 Virtual Staging Tips From Top Listing Agents
At the end of the day, the virtual staging software or service you choose is far less important than learning the best practices of virtual staging. That’s why we reached out to some ace agents we know to get their take on how to get the best bang for your buck from virtual staging. Here’s what they told us:
1. Always Include Unstaged Listing Pictures After Virtually Staged Pictures
In order to help buyers understand just how much the right furnishings can improve a home, New York City associate broker Laura Copersino recommends including a picture showing the room vacant right after the staged picture. This can also help manage buyer expectations and avoid having to overcome the inevitable disappointment that comes with seeing beautifully staged pictures online and then walking into a vacant home. Want to help remind buyers how great your vacant listing can look with the right furnishings? Laura has a brilliant solution: Print out the virtually staged picture on a nice canvas and hang it in the empty room.
2. Keep the Furnishings Neutral
Nancy Strong, a listing agent with Douglas Elliman in Westchester, New York, recommends keeping the furnishings neutral in order to help prospective buyers get a better sense of perspective and room size.
Here are a few more tips from Nancy:
- You have to take the time to go through the options the service provides. Don’t rush it or assign it to an assistant unless you trust their taste fully.
- Don’t assume that the staging elements you choose will be sized correctly or in the manner you were hoping for on the first try. Make sure the company you work with allows for changes (one or two rounds should work), even if you have to pay extra for them.
3. Always Stage for Your Buyer Profile & Property Lifestyle
Jared Bonasera, managing director for the development marketing arm of Douglas Elliman, Texas, advises agents to always keep their buyer profile and property lifestyle in mind when virtually staging a listing. Even if you think you have an eye for interior design, don’t make the mistake of staging for yourself rather than your potential buyers. For example, you might love mid-century industrial design, but if you’re trying to virtually stage a beachfront condo in a senior community in Key West, a large number of your potential buyers might hate it.
4. Use Neutrals to Make the Space More Inviting
Lauren Spiegel, an agent in the Hamptons in New York, reminded us that choosing the right color theme for your virtually staged listing is crucial. She recommends using earth tones or soft beach colors to make a listing feel more inviting. She also pointed out that plants can help warm up a space and make it feel lush.
5. Pay Attention to the Lighting
Virtual staging can’t save bad photos. Marci Williams, an agent in New York City, offered great advice that many newer agents might not think of: Always make sure that the pictures you choose to virtually stage have great lighting.
6. Compensate for What the Home Is Missing
While you should never fake views out windows or make a listing sunnier than it is in reality, you can and should stage strategically to compensate for problems the listing might have. New York City associate broker Jessica Orbach has a few clever strategies:
“If the apartment is small or lacks closet space, have the virtual stager add furniture that offers storage. Instead of an L-shaped couch and chairs that take up more depth, opt for a standard couch and put the television on top of a deeper console that offers storage. Instead of nightstand tables, add nightstand-height dressers; the top still functions as a table while offering storage.”
7. Use Current Design Trends, but Always Keep Your Audience in Mind
Since today’s buyers are more design-savvy than ever, New York City broker Cynthia Jacinta Keskinkaya recommends incorporating the latest trends in your staging. Even if they don’t love the styling, both buyers and your seller will see that you’re aware of the current design aesthetic.
However, she also warned that knowing your audience is crucial, so don’t go overboard with whatever’s cool on Pinterest this week if the majority of your potential buyers aren’t quite as hip as you are.
Over to You
Have great virtual staging software you swear by or a tip for our readers? Let us know in the comments.
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