How to Choose and Arrange Home Staging Furniture

Whether you've got a home you'd like to sell or a place you'd like to rent, a bit of energy and time invested in making a space feel like home can have a big impact on potential buyers or tenants. People may be more likely to take to a place if they can picture actually living in it.

Adding furniture and decor to a house or an apartment can both make the place more visually appealing and help people imagine actually living there. Rental furniture can be a great option for temporary home staging.

If you decide to rent furniture to stage a home, here are some tips from experts on how to choose and arrange furniture for home staging:

Complement the space

Home staging furniture is there to complement the best features of the space. When choosing pieces, this article from AOL's Real Estate blog recommends picking those that fit with the flow of the interior — and not overdoing it. One interior design expert interviewed in the post notes that "the furniture should be a prop to help sell the home." That means using pieces that fit with the appearance of the house or apartment, and thinking of the furniture you choose as primarily there for decor rather than for comfort. (According to the post, this probably also means having fewer pieces of furniture in the space than you would if you were living in it!)

Go with the flow

This may sound counter-intuitive, but you should arrange staging furniture in ways that may not be the same as how it's arranged in a lived-in home. That's one of the tips from this slideshow on "Staging Secrets" from frontdoor.com. According to the post, it's better to float furniture away from walls than to push it up against them. Floating furniture can create an obvious way for people to flow through the home, and the post recommends grouping furniture together in "conversational groups."

Be photogenic

When choosing home staging furniture, you should also think about what pieces would be the most photogenic. Prospective buyers or tenants may take pictures of the space to help them remember it, and some colors and patterns photograph better than others. This blog post from Houzz.com suggests picking furniture in colors and styles that photograph well. That means forgoing bold color choices like bright reds or dark greens for more neutral tones.

Don't forget the floor

This article from the Washington Post presents some "Secrets of Home Stagers." One of its tips is to choose rugs to highlight the best features of the space, but be judicious about where and how you place them. According to the article, you should not just place rugs haphazardly throughout the space. Instead, use them to highlight unique features like fireplace hearths or bay windows.

Want to see more tips for choosing furniture for home staging? Here are a few helpful resources:

Furniture for Home Staging [realestate.aol.com]

Staging Secrets: How to Dress Your House for Success [frontdoor.com]

Home Staging to Sell [houzz.com]

Secrets of Home Stagers [washingtonpost.com]

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