Stand in your great-room doorway, near where the first listing photo will be taken, and notice what your eye lands on first. In a fine home, that look can go to the sofa back instead of the stone fireplace behind it. At Sell It Well Home Staging, we stage higher-end homes from our base in Boone, and that first view from the doorway is the one a listing photo usually records. We choose the furniture for that room's architecture, dimensions and color palette, so the features you paid for are the first ones in that frame.
What the Doorway Shows Before We Stage
Ordinary furniture under a two-story ceiling looks smaller than its real size. The sofa was bought for an everyday living room, and in a tall room the wall above it turns into a blank space in the photo. A small framed print hung over it makes that wall look emptier, since standard-size art can look undersized on a tall wall. Above the sofa, one larger canvas fills enough of that height to make the wall look finished, and the ceiling starts to show as volume instead of as a gap.
In an older Boone house the doorway shows a different problem. There, a carved sofa and a patterned rug sit in front of original oak trim, and the eye has two busy surfaces to sort through. A chair set across a half-closed pair of pocket doors hides the wide opening between two rooms. We keep that opening clear of furniture, so both rooms show through it. A newer tall room needs furniture with enough presence to fill the volume, while older homes with original detail get simpler lines from us so the trim stays visible.
Turning the Seating Toward the Hearth
Where the room has a fireplace, stagers use it as the anchor for the furniture. We turn the sofa to face the hearth and pull it off the wall, with chairs on either side, so the group closes around the fire instead of lining the room's edges. A low coffee table in the middle of the group keeps the line from the sofa to the hearth open. Pulling the seating closer together in a big room keeps the middle from looking empty when the photographer frames the whole room. We also leave a clear walking path from the doorway to the group, so the route to the fireplace is visible in the photo. From the doorway, the stone surround sits at the center of the group, and the furniture leads your eye toward it rather than blocking it.
Two Rugs Divide One Wide Floor
A great room large enough for two seating areas works well with each group on its own rug. One rug holds the fireplace group, and a second holds a reading corner or a pair of chairs by the windows, so the floor shows as two areas a household would use. With no rug beneath them, those pieces would sit loose on a wide stretch of wood, and the room would look half set up. The fabrics on those pieces stay plain, in cream, taupe or warm gray, because your stone, tile and stained wood already supply the richest color in the room. We leave the mantel nearly bare and let one larger piece of art carry the tall wall. A plant or a bowl of greenery adds some warmth beside the stone. Essential, Deluxe and Premium are the names of our packages, and we'll suggest one for your Boone home once the walkthrough is over.
Book a Walkthrough Before Your Photo Date
The view from your doorway is the one worth staging the great room for. Call Sell It Well Home Staging at (515) 238-3795 to book a walkthrough of your Boone home in the weeks before the photos are taken. We'll walk your home with you and choose pieces from our inventory for its architecture, its dimensions and its palette.
