My friend Dana listed her townhouse in March. Two weeks before the photographer came, she called me from her living room and said, “A stager just quoted me $2,400 and I don’t know if that’s normal or a joke.”
So I went over with coffee and a notebook. We got three quotes that week, did a lot of the work ourselves, and paid a pro for one piece of it. This is what home staging cost her, what each quote covered, and the parts you can do on a Saturday with stuff you already own.
What home staging cost looks like on paper
The National Association of Realtors puts some real numbers on this. In its 2025 Profile of Home Staging, the median cost for using a staging service was $1,500. When the seller’s agent handled the staging, the median was $500.
That’s a median, though. A one-hour consultation and a fully furnished empty house are both called “staging,” and they’re nowhere near the same price. Dana’s three quotes made that clear by Wednesday.
The three quotes Dana got
Her place was a two-bedroom townhouse, about 1,300 square feet, and she was still living in it. That matters. Staging a lived-in home is mostly editing. Staging an empty one means renting a whole house of furniture.
- Quote 1, consultation only: $225 for a two-hour walkthrough. The stager goes room by room and you get a written list of what to move, remove, buy or fix. You do the work.
- Quote 2, partial staging: $2,400 to bring in rugs, lamps, art, bedding and a few accent chairs for the living room, primary bedroom and kitchen. Included the first month of rental, then $350 for each month after that.
- Quote 3, full vacant staging: $3,900 for the first month, with all the furniture. This one was for if she moved out before listing, which she’d been considering.
She didn’t move out. That alone took the biggest number off the table.
Where the money goes in a staging quote
I asked the second stager to walk us through her $2,400, and she didn’t mind explaining it. Roughly, it broke down like this:
- Design time: the visit, the plan, picking pieces from her warehouse.
- Delivery and pickup: a truck and two people, twice. Moving furniture in and out is a real cost, which I’d learned the hard way pricing out what local movers cost for my brother.
- Setup day: hanging art, making beds, styling shelves. About five hours for two people.
- Rental of the items: usually a first-month block, then a monthly fee if the house sits.
That monthly fee is the part to watch. A home that takes three months to sell turns a $2,400 quote into $3,100.
Which rooms are worth paying for
If you only pay for part of it, put the money where buyers look. In the same NAR report, buyers’ agents ranked the living room as the most important room to stage, at 37 percent. The primary bedroom and kitchen came right after it.
That matched what Dana’s stager said, almost word for word. I’ve never heard of anyone picking a house for its guest bathroom. So we skipped the second bedroom, which became a clean, mostly empty office, and focused on the three rooms that show up first in the listing photos.
The DIY home staging checklist we used
We did this ourselves before the consultation. It took one full Saturday and two evenings.
- Took every personal photo off the walls in the living room and hallway. Left two in the bedroom.
- Cleared kitchen counters down to a coffee maker, a cutting board and a bowl of lemons.
- Pulled one third of the clothes out of each closet, because buyers open closets. Ours went into bins in her car’s trunk for a month.
- Swapped every bulb to the same warm white, so the photos didn’t look half yellow, half blue.
- Bought new white bath towels and one plain duvet cover. Total: $96.
- Removed one chair from the dining table and one armchair from the living room. Fewer pieces makes a room read bigger.
The decluttering was the biggest job and the one that did the most. My decluttering before a move plan is basically the same process, and it means you pack less later too. NAR found that decluttering was the improvement agents recommended most, at 91 percent, so this isn’t just my own bias.
What Dana paid next to the staging quotes
She paid for the consultation, did the list herself, and rented nothing. This is her real spend against the two bigger quotes, assuming the house sat for one month.
| Item | What Dana did (consult + DIY) | Partial staging quote | Full vacant quote |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stager fee | $225 (consultation) | $2,400 (first month included) | $3,900 (first month included) |
| New items bought | $96 (towels, duvet) | $0 | $0 |
| Deep clean before photos | $280 | $280 | $280 |
| Storage for removed stuff | $0 (car trunk, friend’s garage) | $0 | Moving out anyway |
| Total for one month | $601 | $2,680 | $4,180 |
The $280 deep clean was worth every dollar, by the way. If you’re pricing one, my post on house cleaning prices shows how one-time cleans are usually billed.
Three home staging cost mistakes to avoid
- Not asking about the monthly fee. The first month is often included, and the second month is where the bill creeps up. Ask what happens if the house hasn’t sold in 30 days.
- Paying to stage every room. Spare bedrooms and bathrooms rarely need rented furniture. Clean and empty usually does the job there.
- Staging before decluttering. A stager working around your stuff is a stager billing for extra hours. Clear it out first, then call.
What didn’t work for us
We tried to stage the bookshelf ourselves. I’d seen the color-coordinated, three-objects-per-shelf look online, so we spent an hour arranging her books by spine color with a few plants. In the photos, it looked busy and weirdly fake. The stager took one look during her follow-up visit, removed about half the books and turned the rest spine-in on one shelf. It looked better with half as much on it. I’d overthought it.
Also, the trunk-as-storage idea was fine for a month, but it would not have worked for three. If you expect a longer sale or you’re clearing out a lot, check what fits in each storage unit size before you start piling things in the garage.
One small thing: keep the receipts. IRS Publication 523 lets you subtract selling expenses, including “any other fees or costs to sell your home,” when you figure the gain on a sale. Whether staging counts for you is a question for a tax preparer, not me. But you can’t ask about a receipt you threw away.
Grab the free printable: my one-page Home Staging Prep Checklist, room by room, with a column for “do it myself” and a column for “pay a pro,” plus a box to compare staging quotes side by side. Get the free checklist →
FAQ
How much does home staging cost on average?
NAR’s 2025 staging report put the median cost of a staging service at $1,500, and $500 when the seller’s agent did the staging. Real quotes swing a lot. Dana got $225 for a consultation, $2,400 for partial staging and $3,900 for a fully furnished vacant home.
Is it cheaper to stage a home you still live in?
Usually, yes. In an occupied home you already have furniture, so most of the work is removing things and styling what’s left. Vacant staging means renting a full set of furniture plus delivery and pickup, which is why Dana’s vacant quote was the highest of the three.
Can I stage my house myself?
You can do most of it. Declutter, remove personal photos, clear counters, match your light bulbs and buy a few new linens. A paid consultation, around $225 in Dana’s case, gives you a written list so you’re not guessing.
If you’re listing soon, start with the closets and counters this weekend. Then book one consultation and bring the stager a cleaner house than the one you’d show your mom. Dana’s townhouse went under contract in nine days, and she still calls the $601 the best money she spent all spring.
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