We’re finishing up the home selling process (the sale is pending), and I’ve got a lot of people asking about how I staged my home and where I bought my staging furniture and decor. For some background info, paying a stager was going to be expensive. We were quoted at least $1500 a month. We didn’t want that money just going down the drain, so we decided to stage ourselves. In this post, I’m sharing what furniture and decor we got for staging and providing links to them in case you want it too.

FYI, for those of you that aren’t aware, we just moved from Seattle to St George, UT so we can be closer to grandparents (a.k.a. free and fun babysitting!) and closer to cheaper housing. But just so we’re clear, we will forever miss Seattle and our time spent there. We will also really miss our little condo and the happy memories we made in it.

(This page contains affiliate links that we may be compensated for. Your clicks and purchases help support The DIY Lighthouse at no extra charge to you. We only put links to products we love and would recommend anyway.)

How to Prep for Staging Your Home

If you’re working on staging your home, before you can do the fun part (buying staging furniture and decor), there are a few really important things you should do…

1. Get rid of bulky furniture. This will make the space in your home look bigger. (And when you bring in staging furniture, make sure the pieces are on the smaller side.)
2. Pack up personal items (family photos, religious items, etc.). You want the potential buyers to be able to envision themselves living in your home.
3. Declutter by clearing your counters, surfaces, and floors. (Remove appliances from kitchen counters, get your toothbrushes off your bathroom counters, pack up kids’ toys, etc.) Clearing the clutter will open up your home and make it look bigger and more appealing.
4. Clean. If your home is gross and dirty looking, then some new furniture will only make it look halfway better. Put in some elbow grease and your home will look nice and, therefore, sell for more money.

Staging Storage Tip

We rented a little storage unit nearby for only $24 and moved almost everything out of our home for staging.

Storage Tip: We found a storage facility that offered the first month free on a unit. They charged a $24 initial admin fee, and they required insurance to cover the property we were putting into the storage unit, a service they offered for between $X and $Y. However, a quick call to our Home Owners insurance provider revealed that our things are covered even in storage, allowing us to decline the storage-facility coverage. We moved our stuff out of the storage unit before the second month started, so we never had to pay for a full monthly price of renting the unit.

Our Contemporary Staging Style

Once you’ve done the clearing and prepping, you can start bringing in your staging furniture! Pick your staging style. We wanted to go for a contemporary, modern feel throughout our condo. Also, we didn’t want the style to be too masculine or too feminine within each room. With that in mind, we started getting furniture and decor to fit our style.

Living Room Staging

Living Room Before Picture

I love seeing before and afters, so here is the before of our living room, pre staging. It was very homey and a comfortable and functional space before, but we had several pieces of large, bulky furniture compared to the after picture above. The furniture in the after picture makes the same room look much more spacious.

Living Room Staging Costs & Closeups

Total in this room we spent under $800.

Here is a quick breakdown with rounded pricing:

$290 couch + $75 throw pillows/inserts + $85 coffee table + $40 coffee table decor + $95 rug + $70 tripod lamp + $50 tv stand/statement art + $30 side table + $40 florals/misc decor + $15 sheer curtain = $790

Here are the links to the living furniture and decor we purchased:

• Couch (Midcentury modern style in dark grey)
• Throw pillows cases (modern 18×18 inches set of 4)
• Aqua throw pillows cases (18×18 set of 2)
• Throw pillow inserts
• Coffee Table
• Coffee table book – Seattle Then and Now
• Rug (8×10 feet area rug with Moroccan trellis design)
• Tripod Lamp (Midcentury modern style)
• Terrarium (black metal and glass geometric sphere)
• Air plants (light green faux succulent air plants)
• White vase (modern)
• Side table, candles, vase- Ross
• Faux florals- Joann’s
• Art, TV stand- DIY
• TV stand knobs- Hobby Lobby

And here are some more close-up pictures of the living room staging.

Bedroom Staging

Bedroom Before Picture

The before picture below shows that we really changed almost everything in the bedroom. The only thing that remained the same was our mattress, duvet, curtains, and tv. Literally everything else is new. We wanted to get a new, minimal bed frame and decorate with a fancier, more expensive, and more hotel-like look.

Bedroom Staging Costs & Closeups

Total in this room we spent under $900.

Here is a quick breakdown with rounded pricing:

$150 bed frame + $30 duvet cover + $25 sheet set + $115 bed throw pillows + $60 throw blankets + $140 nightstands + $75 table lamps + $80 statement art + $50 rug + $80 accent chair + $35 accent chair throw pillow + $55 floor lamp = $895

Here are the links to the bedroom furniture and decor we purchased:

• Queen bed frame
• Duvet cover set
• White bed sheet set
• Leather bed throw pillows cases (faux leather 18×18 inch pillows)
• Leather bed throw pillows inserts
• Long bed throw pillow (French laundry stripe pillow 12×24 inch pillow)
• Throw blanket A (rivet bubble textured grey and cream with fringe)
• Throw blanket B (knit zig-zag textured woven with fringe)
• Nightstands
• Table lamps (modern geometric gold and white lamp)
• Rug (3×5 feet Moroccan white and grey rug)
• Accent chair
• Leather chair throw pillow case (faux brown leather 12×20 inches) 
• Leather chair throw pillow insert
• Brass floor lamp (antique brass pharmacy style lamp)

And here are some more close-up pictures of the bedroom staging.

Den/Home Office Staging

Den/Home Office Before Picture

The before picture below shows that we really changed just about everything in this room too. In fact, this room used to be our son’s nursery and we made it into an office space instead. Because let’s be real, not a lot of people in the Seattle condo market have babies. There are a bunch of young, techy people. We ended up keeping the mountain mural and animal art, because it still fit with our PNW vibe, but we added industrial, more masculine touches to the space.

Den/Home Office Staging Costs & Closeups

Total in this room we spent under $450.

Here is a quick breakdown with rounded pricing:

$60 desk + $50 desk chair + $50 desk lamp + $15 desk decor + $75 Seattle neighborhood map/frame + $40 animal art frames + $55 floor lamp + $60 rug + $25 paint for accent chair + $10 accent chair throw pillow = $440

Here are the links to the den/home office furniture and decor we purchased:

• Desk (folding writing computer desk in modern industrial style)
• Desk chair (modern industrial)
• Table lamp for desk (industrial style black iron lantern lamp with glass shade and Edison bulb)
• Seattle text picture frame (18×24 inch black)
• Seattle text print (Seattle neighborhood map print)
• Bear head metal wall decor
• Accent chair pillow case (forest scene linen 18×18 inch throw pillow case)
• Accent chair pillow insert
• Geometric rug (modern dark grey 4×6 feet)
• Black floor lamp (modern and dimmable)
• Animal pictures tutorial
• Animal picture frames (real glass wood frame 8×10 inches)
• Accent chair- DIY
• Mountain mural tutorial

And here are some more close-up pictures of the home office staging.

Kitchen Staging

Kitchen Before Picture

This room didn’t really change much. As you can tell from the before picture below, not a lot is different. We took almost everything off the counter except for strategically placed items. We also majorly wiped down the stainless steel appliances to make them all shiny. The biggest change was our pendant lights. One of our lights broke, so we replaced them with sleek, modern pendant lights.

Kitchen Staging Costs & Closeups

Total in this room we spent under $65. (Not including pendant lights because we had to replace them anyway. Those were $20 each.)

Here is a quick breakdown with rounded pricing:

$50 misc kitchen decor + $15 stainless steel polisher  = $65

Here are a few links to the kitchen furniture and decor we used:

• Pendant lights (polished chrome with frosted glass shade)
• Stools (adjustable hydraulic faux leather bar stools)
• Cookbook (It’s All Good)
• Stainless steel appliance cleaner & polish (with microfiber cloth)
• Cookbook stand, Washington cutting board, and tea towel- from local small shops

Bathroom Staging

Bathroom Before Picture

The before picture should also show a bath mat right next to the bathtub. With staging we swapped our aqua towels out for white (hotels have white towels for a reason–it suggests cleanliness), removed shower supplies, and overall tidied and decluttered. But not much needed to change. The bathroom was definitely the most boring space in our staging process–which isn’t a bad thing.

Bathroom Staging Costs & Closeups

Total in this room we spent under $50. All of the $50 were spent on white towels/hand towels.

Here are the towels we used:

• White towel set A
• White towel set B

Balcony Staging

Unfortunately I don’t have a great before picture for the balcony. But I’m sure you can envision two bright blue deck chairs taking up a ton of space. We swapped it out for this long-but-discrete bench, added another plant, washed all the glass and surfaces until they sparkled, and called it a day.

Total cost: $85 for the bench.

And I’m not even going to share a link with you because the bench was terrible quality and not worth the price.

Total Staging Costs

Hopefully that room-by-room breakdown was helpful. By now, you probably want to know how much we spent on staging all-in. The answer…

Gross Staging Costs: ~$2,325

Now, that’s over $800 more than we would have paid to just have a stager come in and do it for us (because it took us less than a month to sell–stagers usually charge per month). BUT. Here’s why we came out way on top.

1. Before we bought our staging furniture, we sold some of our old furniture. (Our old couch, coffee table, dresser, etc.) We got $680 from this. Because you could argue that either way we would have made this money, I won’t include this increase in our final cost. But for us it was nice to see some extra money to use on staging stuff.
2. On Facebook Marketplace we were able to sell a bunch of things we got for staging for essentially the price we paid for them. We got $1,805 from selling this staging furniture and decor.
3. Lastly, we got to keep whatever we didn’t sell. If we had paid a stager, then the money invested would have been lost at the end of the month. But by staging ourselves, we got furniture and decor in return for the money we invested.

After recuperating $1,805 worth of some staging furniture and decor, we essentially only paid…

Net Staging Costs: ~$520

All in all, we saved about $1,000 staging ourselves, and we got some furniture and decor out of the deal. Not bad. And honestly I had a blast planning and decorating those rooms. But, that doesn’t mean we want to move again anytime soon 😉

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