Having access to technology that lets you take a photograph of an empty room, and furnish it in whatever style you want, is an incredible advantage for real estate photographers. But not all photographers and interior designers.

You are adding tremendous value to the photographs that you submit by getting them virtually staged. But that advantage is not worth much if you don’t know what you’re doing when it comes to picking out furniture to match a room or the overall style of the home. So, some people may end up staging a room that isn’t appealing and doesn’t showcase the best features of the room.

This can lead to a lot of back and forth with the agent or home seller, countless revisions, and potentially lost business down the road. So, it’s worth taking the time to understand some basic principles of interior design that you can use when you start offering virtual staging to your clients.

Let’s first remind ourselves exactly what virtual staging is.

What Is Virtual Staging?

Virtual staging is the art of using computer software to digitally alter a photograph of an empty room so that it appears fully furnished. In today’s digital-first economic climate, realtors are doing the vast majority of their marketing online to clients who don’t have time or the ability to visit homes in person. They want to see a realistic vision of what the room will look like furnished, and as photographers, we can do that for our realtor clients.

You can choose between downloading software onto your phone or PC which lets you make the creative choices and manipulate the furniture into a room, or you can work with a trusted service provider who will take the slog work out of virtual staging and work with you to create the perfectly staged room. The choice is yours.

Virtual home staging is a cost-effective, quick, and efficient way of marketing properties in the digital age and it’s transforming the way that the industry operates.

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Virtual Staging Ideas and Examples

• Get the Basics Right – That means making sure the room you’re photographing is empty, clean, and well-lit. A really good photograph gives the virtual staging artists so much more to work with, which means they’re not spending most of their time and energy fixing the original image.

• Strike a Balance Between Clean and Inviting – Most modern design features a very minimal aesthetic that showcases how much space there is. But bear in mind that buyers have furniture and a lifetime of possessions and they need help visualizing where they will put all their things. Give them examples that reflect the reality of our working lives, not some tech billionaire fantasy of zen living.

• Use a Neutral Background – Unless you’re very experienced or you’re going for a very specific look, you should set a neutral color foundation to set an emotional tone. Then, use pops of color to highlight areas and accessorize the room. Try to set a calm and inviting tone to each room that you stage.

Then onto that neutral palette, you can use splashes of color to excite and enthuse prospective buyers. On the cushions, rugs, flowers, and paintings – that’s where you can use color and quirkiness to give a room more personality.

• Decide on a Focal Point and Draw Attention to It – Every room should have a single area or piece of furniture that catches the eye when you walk in. Decide what that is and build around it. From a fireplace to a great window or a beautiful couch….whatever it is, you get to decide who is the star of the show in each room.

• Prioritize Natural Lighting – People love to know how the light moves inside a room. Try to keep as much natural lighting as you can by not covering up the windows or digitally manipulating the light.

That said, it helps to use a professional virtual staging company that will help you light, shade, and edit the furniture just so, so that the image looks as realistic as possible. It can be nearly impossible to tell that a good virtually staged image is even virtually staged at all!

Conclusion

The options are endless when it comes to virtual staging, and the best artists can turn an ordinary room into something that looks like it belongs in a glossy, interior design magazine. You can enhance your results by spending some time thinking about interior design and understanding its principles. This will make collaboration with your virtual staging company much smoother and help you produce a greater volume of excellent work.

To get started with virtual staging, sign up today for PhotoUp’s easy-to-use virtual staging service. Work with creative visual staging artists who will understand your vision and turn your photographs into glossy magazine-ready showrooms.

Browse the latest virtual staging library right here and get a sense of our style.

Virtual staging is a fast, easy, and affordable way of staging a home so the property would be appealing to would-be buyers. Virtual staging also has many other benefits for real estate photographers.

The technique involves adding virtually designed furniture, appliances, and accents in a high-quality image of vacant interior space. As a real estate photographer, adding virtual staging to your menu of services can help make you a one-stop-shop for all your clients’ real estate marketing needs.

Virtual staging is in the same wheelhouse of computer-aided design (CAD). And when it comes to this type of graphic design, there’s a natural tendency to go overboard, whether it’s the client’s instruction or the designer’s intuition.

Here are 5 basic but essential virtual staging rules that you and your virtual stager need to be aware of.

1. Match the style of furnishings with the theme of the room

One of the rules of sensible interior design is to use pieces that go well together with the room. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Well, the same holds true for virtual staging.

As a rule of thumb, furniture, decor, appliances, and accent pieces should match the physical space (aka, the home itself). For example, classic furniture goes well with a more contemporary-style home. But, classic furniture would certainly look out of place in a modern house with big floor to ceiling windows, stainless steel appliances, and an open floor plan.

Unsure of what style of virtual furniture to add to a vacant room? Check out magazines, websites, and photos that feature home decorating ideas and sensible interior design. Examples would be Houzz, Pinterest, or simply search for interior design photos on Instagram.
Looking for magazines to help inspire you? Check out Architecture’s Digest, Home and Garden, Ideal Home, and more.

PhotoUp also offers an online catalog where you can choose thousands of pieces of furniture that you can add to your images.

2. Make sure the design is sensible and reflects reality.

Now we all know that virtual home staging is the process of blending elements of CAD into an image in order to make the image look realistic. However, taking the perfect real estate photo is the first step to producing a great virtual staging image.

A great virtual staging image will also take into effect the lighting and shadows once the furniture has been placed. Let’s say you took an interior shot of a master bedroom that features a large window facing East. In the image, sunlight streams through the window during the mid-morning sun. When adding furniture under the sunbeam, you would expect it to look brighter and there would normally be shadows cast along the floor and walls where the new furniture blocks the sunlight.

If the floor is made of polished marble, then there should be a light reflection of the furniture seen on the floor. The same goes for mirrors. If the furniture is truly part of the room, you would expect to see its reflection in the mirror, right?

All these effects should be seen in a great virtually staged image. Effects like these make your photos more convincing and will help you sell more virtual staging services to your clients. The best virtual staging companies out there will be aware of these effects and make sure they are included in every image.

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3. Limit the number of furnishings or decorations.

Have you ever furnished or decorated a newly renovated room in your home? In your excitement to liven up the place, it’s common to add furniture, appliances, or accents to the room. In the end, the room may seem cluttered and busy. Not exactly what you were going for, right?

The same goes for virtual staging. It is easy to go overboard due to a number of factors—excitement, that nagging thought that “it is not enough”, or the desire to put a plant on every shelf and a picture on every wall.
By doing this, you can make the final image look too overwhelming and flashy.

Resist the temptation to have the stager put virtual furnishings in every square inch of space. Remember that you are trying to give the potential property buyer an idea of what their new home could look like.
The virtual furniture in the photo may not be to his/her liking, but they’ll enjoy having something to reference when deciding what furniture they want to put into each room when they move in.

So, take our advice and keep it simple when virtually staging a room. Your clients and potential home buyers will appreciate it.

4. Know your clients

When virtually staging an image, it’s important to know what your client wants when it comes to virtual furniture. What style of furniture do they like? Are they particular about the furniture they want in each room? Do you need to send them a virtual furniture catalog and let them pick our furniture in advance OR do they let you have full control as to what looks best?
At the end of the day, your job is to make your clients happy. Knowing their style and preferences in advance will help you provide them with a virtual staging image that they’re sure to love.

5. Minimize adding your personal touches

Sure, you want to have a “signature” touch for personal branding. But often, this can become a hindrance instead of helpful. Remember, you are virtually staging a photo to sell a property, not to impress your clients with your love of excessive foliage or affinity for zebra print rugs.

Resist the urge of putting something personal in these photos and focus more on making your clients love the images you give them.

By simply being aware of the rules mentioned above, you’ll be on the right track to selling more virtual staging images and providing even more value to your best clients.

Fortunately, there is a way to add beautiful furniture and decor to an empty home that’s fast, easy, and won’t break the bank. It’s called virtual staging.

Virtual staging involves digital designers creating realistic furniture, decor, and accent pieces then integrating them into an image of an empty room. And, the best part is that virtual staging is typically faster and cheaper than physically staging a home.

Check out this article which details all of the other advantages of virtual staging.

As a real estate photographer, you’ll want to think about your process a bit differently when shooting a home that’s going to be virtually staged. Here are a few tips to make sure you’re shooting the best possible image for virtual staging:

1. Take top-quality photos

Virtual staging furniture is meticulously designed to resemble real furniture, decor, and appliances that you would find in a home. Because virtual furniture looks so real, you’ll need to take high-resolution real estate photos in order to make sure your images don’t end up looking fake.

Taking photos on your iPhone or point-and-shoot cameras is not recommended for virtual staging. Using a DSLR camera and shooting in a RAW file format will give your virtual staging editors the best chance to make your images look as realistic as possible.

2. Use a camera with high dynamic range (HDR)

The wide range of lighting in real estate photography makes it necessary to take images using a DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera. Cheap cameras or even high-end smartphones generally lack the ability to handle such a wide range of lighting.

Therefore, it’s best to use a DSLR with an auto exposure bracketing feature. This will let you use high dynamic range (HDR) imaging so your image is ready to be virtually staged.

An HDR image is a series of photos of the same subject, but each photo is taken at different shutter speeds and different exposure levels. Each of these “bracketed photos” shows varying degrees of luminosity. Bracketed images are blended together using photo-editing software. The result is a single photo wherein all areas are in perfect exposure, emphasizing each detail beautifully.

Check out this article about HDR and how and when to use it.

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3. Turn on all the lights

This is a best practice for any real estate photographer. One of the first things you’ll want to do in any home that you shooting is to turn on all of the lights in every room. This will help give the rooms a more natural and warm look. It’s also helpful for your virtual staging editors. By turning on all of the lights, the virtual stagers can better deal with shadows and shading, which helps make each room feel natural and realistic once the furniture is added.

4. Keep rooms empty as much as possible

The primary purpose of virtual staging is to bring furniture and decor into a vacant house. As such, it is best to keep the rooms as empty as possible.

Take away distractions such as extra furniture, decorations, toys, and other unnecessary clutter. The emptier a room looks, the better. The goal is to make the room an empty canvas so that the virtual staging artist can work their magic!

5. Shoot in landscape

When orienting your shots, make sure the spaces are shot in landscape, not portrait. An image that is displayed in landscape mode is wider than it is tall. When it comes to real estate photography, landscape-oriented photos show a lot more area, allowing graphic designers to use the maximum amount of space to add virtual furniture.

In addition, landscape photos look better on the MLS and other real estate marketing websites such as Zillow.

6. Get as much of the room as possible in your photo

Try taking your photos slightly off the corner of the room, making sure to include the most prominent features of the space (fireplace, windows, built-in shelves, etc.).
Put your back towards the “dead space” in a room and try to capture as much of the room as possible in each shot. Typically, you’ll only want to stage 1 or maybe 2 images per room, so choose your shots wisely!

7. Don’t use lenses that give you too wide a view

A lens that is at least 18 mm and at most 200 mm is a great place to start. However, do not use fish-eye lenses or ultra-wide angle lenses (Your GoPro isn’t going to come in handy here). That’s because these lenses cause a lot of distortion, making walls, floors, and built-in features longer or higher than they are in real life.

8. More room, less ceiling

There should be twice as much floor and wall area as the ceiling. Remember that it’s on the floor and the walls where most of the virtual furniture and decor will be placed. Spend an extra few minutes to double-check your images to make sure there is enough room to add furniture into each shot.

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9. Shoot during the “golden hour”

The “golden hour” is every photographer’s ideal time to shoot. It typically happens twice per day, once during dawn (between 6-9 am) and once at twilight (around 4-7 pm). This is the time in the day when the sun is not as high in the sky and therefore not as bright.

However, be wary of windows that face directly east or west. Sunlight can shine directly through those windows, which creates harsh shadows or overexposes the image, washing away some of the key details. Here’s a golden hour calculator so you can find out exactly when the golden hour is going to be in your area.

10. Choose your best images

As with most types of photography, you will want to shoot a lot of photos using different angles and camera settings. The more photos you take, the better. It’s better to take a healthy number of photos and delete the ones that you don’t need, rather than redoing the shoot completely.

Now, that the shoot is over, it’s time to select your best photos and send them off to be virtually staged! After you’ve narrowed it down to your best images, you’ll want to send your best 1 or 2 shots of each room for staging.

Turnaround times can vary, but most virtual staging companies will get you your final images between 48 to 72 hours.

With PhotoUp, virtual staging costs 20 credits per final image (How much does a credit cost?) and turnaround time is between 24-48 hours. All you need to do is to sign up for a PhotoUp account, select a furniture set, and upload your images. We take care of the rest!