Luxury Home Staging Glossary – What All These Terms Really Mean

As luxury home stagers, we use different terms on a daily basis that might not make sense to anyone outside our field. Ever heard us say something that made you stop and just go, “Huh?” We listed a few of our favorite go-to terms and what they mean below. 

Accessory Staging: A service EED offers in conjunction with our verbal consultations. All we bring with us to these types of stagings are smaller accessory items, such as: vases, florals, window treatments, artwork, accent pillows, bedding, etc.

As-Is: The price you can list a property at without doing anything to the house. 

Depersonalize: Removing any items from a house that have a direct correlation with the current owner(s) of the property. This includes: picture frames with family photos, monograms, spiritual quotes or symbols, etc. This can be the hardest aspect for homeowners to grasp emotionally. It is absolutely nothing personal! The goal is to appeal to the target market (see definition below).

De-staging: The process of removing all of EED’s items from a staging that has been completed. This is Katie’s favorite term to use because it is exactly what it sounds like!

DOM: Otherwise referred to as “days on market”. We use this acronym in two different ways: days on market before staging and days on market after staging. These stats are crucial to EED because they prove and reaffirm that what we are doing makes the biggest of differences!

Focal Point: The place where your eye naturally goes to in a space. This tends to either be a big feature of the room or where the largest piece of furniture is in a space. For example, a living room’s focal point tends to be the fireplace, while a bedroom’s focal points tend to be the headboard wall.

Layout: Our plan for how furniture or spaces of a property connect. Layouts can also be called “floor” or “furniture” plans. 

Occupied Staging: A staging that is completed when the current owner’s are living in the home as it’s on market. For these situations, we offer a verbal consultation where we can go through the property alongside the homeowner to discuss what they can do with their items to showcase the home to its highest potential.

ROI: Stands for “return on investment”. This is a way to measure whether the amount of money put into a property will result in a higher gain in the end purchase price. If you put $15,000 of renovations into the property, but only increase the listing price by $10,000 then you have a low ROI. However, if you put $10,000 into the property and increase the property value by $25,000 then you have a high ROI and should make that investment!

Sourcing: We use the term anytime we are looking for product to add to our staging inventory. Typically our sourcing is either online through our various Interior Design vendors or going to market in the spring or fall to see new products.

Stage Day: The word we use to describe the anticipated day our team and movers arrive with all of the furniture and accessories to be staged. We place and stylize everything so when we leave it is picture ready for marketing opportunities.

Target Market: This is a group of buyers that you are trying to sell a property to. They typically have similar demographic characteristics such as annual income, household size, wants/needs in a home, etc.

Top Dollar: The price you can list a property at when you invest in presenting the home at its highest potential. Typically this is when you have taken the extra steps to either remodel, make updates, or stage the property. 

Traffic Pattern: The crucial flow of how people enter, exit, and walk into and around a space. Making sure there is enough clearance for potential buyers to walk into a space, as well as circle around the room is just one of the many factors going through a home stager’s mind when selecting furniture for a staging.

Vacant Staging: Our most common luxury staging service – a staging done in a property that is completely empty. These usually tend to be new build homes, but they can also be pre-owned homes that the owner has already moved out of.

Visual Balance: The idea of equal visual weight on either side of a central point or line. Balance can be both symmetrical (mirrored copy) or asymmetrical. Asymmetry is the art of balancing empty space, larger objects, and larger quantities. For example, a large bookshelf on one side of a fireplace might be asymmetrically balanced with three smaller pieces of art stacked vertically on the other side of the fireplace. 

Walk Through: For every luxury vacant staging, there is meeting at the property before Stage Day. This is a time for the client to ask any last minute questions, as well as a time for our designers to get a better sense of the space. This helps us envision space, color, and texture we want to bring in to the space, and we also begin visualizing furniture placement before selecting pieces. Typically this is a 15-30 minute appointment depending on the size of the staging.

To learn more about EED’s Luxury Home Staging services and tips and tricks, check out 7 Easy Trick You Need To Use When Accessorizing Your Built-Ins and Super Simple Steps YOU Can Implement Before Photos – Tricks From Our Verbal Consultations. New blogs are posted every two weeks! If you have a topic you would like us to talk about, shoot us a message on one of our social media platforms or email us to let us know! You can also always reach us at 515-986-1895 or office@ElizabethErinDesigns.com if you need more info!

Until next time!