How to Choose the Best Home Staging Training and Certification Program

Thinking about becoming a home stager?

If so, you are probably looking for a credible training that will get you the highest return on investment and help you start your amazing staging business right from the start. The searching process can feel daunting and overwhelming.

That’s why we created this blog post to walk you through how to choose the right training or certification program. More importantly, how to choose the right training to set yourself up for success!

Taking the leap to a new career in staging is a very exciting time, but this also means that you will be making a commitment to yourself and to your future as a business owner. With so many training and certification programs on the market now, it can be difficult to know which is the best option for you.

This blog post will offer a few tips on how to choose a training or certification program that fits both your goals and your lifestyle, as well as finding the right training that will help to set you on the pathway to success.

Why take a home staging training or a certification program?

It is actually not necessary to take any training to get yourself started as a home stager.

There are many home stagers who have created and grew successful staging businesses and are self-taught, like Dara Donovan of Paloma Home. I interviewed her on the podcast recently, you can listen to the episode here. She gave some great advice on starting out in the business.

If you don’t want to take any kind of training because you feel you already have the skill sets necessary, that is perfectly fine.

But it will be helpful to research the staging industry thoroughly before you taking the leap, so you know and understand what you will be getting yourself into.

In Dara’s case, she already worked in a related industry that requires very similar skill sets. She was already a seasoned photo stylist working with clients like Pottery Barn, West Elm, Williams-Sonoma, Target, GOOP, Emily Henderson Design, just to name a few.

She already knew how colors, patterns, etc. work together in interiors, how to sell through visual and design, and how to create a space that is aspirational for the buyers. She also did her homework on how to become a home stager before she started her staging business. We hopped on a Zoom call when she was deciding if she wanted to pursue a staging business, and we went through all her questions and concerns on the call.

If you are coming from a completely different industry than staging and have no prior business or interior styling experience, taking a training or committing yourself to a certification program can get you to where you want to be with your new business much faster with way less costly mistakes.

A great training or certification program will equip you with all the necessary tools to build a solid foundation for your business after you finish the program. With a strong foundation in your business, you can then grow your business sustainably. That means that you will have longevity with your business, and your business will support the vision you have for your staging business and your life.

After taking a quality training program or certification, you shouldn’t be asking basic questions like “Do I need a contract?”, “Do I need liability insurance?”, or “How do I price my staging projects?” in Facebook groups. Your training or certification should have gone through these things already.

Before you can start looking for the right training program, it is important to do some self-assessment to get clarity about:

• why you want to start a staging business

• the type of work you want to do

• what you want out of this new career

• how does becoming a professional home stager impact or change your personal life for the better (or worse?)

If you want more flexibility in your work schedule, there are many career paths to do so. If you want to be more creative, there are many other careers to do so. You also don’t need to start a new business to just be creative. You can be creative on your own time as a hobby. If you want to work in interiors, there are many different choices such as interior design, interior decorating, working as a furniture rep, etc. So the million-dollar question is: why do you choose staging as your new career choice?

You need to have clarity around why you want to become a home stager.

For example,

• What is the vision of your ideal business?

• What does your day-to-day look like?

• How much money do you want to make?

• How big or small of a business operation do you want?

• Do you want a huge warehouse?

• Do you want a warehouse?

• What does that overall picture look like when you have a business?

• Do you want a team?

Take some time to self-reflect what is it you want out of a staging career and research to find out what it is like to work as a home stager.

Talk to working stagers now. Find out what their work day is like and what does their work week look like, especially during the busy real estate season. Look at stagers’ Instagram and stories where they share their day-to-day and behind-the-scenes. Research all the possible options to find out if this is what you want to invest yourself in. It is important to learn the in’s-and-out’s of the staging industry and what the career entails. Shadow local stagers if you can. Don’t find out that staging is not the right fit for you midway through an expensive course.

As a home stager, you can make a lot of difference in someone’s life.

Your staging work can help home sellers to create more wealth of their initial real estate investment and equip them with more equity in pursuing the next chapter of their lives. It can also help real estate agents earn more income. At the same time, your work fulfills you and makes you proud and happy. THAT is an amazing accomplishment!

What should you consider when choosing the right home staging training or certification program?

When it comes to choosing the right training or certification program for you, there are multiple factors to consider. You need to prioritize what matters to you and what will help you to become successful in creating a solid foundation for a successful business*. And that is by your own definition of what success means, not what others have defined for you in a cookie-cutter home staging course.

*Beware of Predatory Marketing Practices by Unethical Staging Training Programs and Schools

*Notice that I didn’t say “starting a staging business” in the previous paragraph, I said “creating a solid foundation for a successful home staging business.”

Starting a home staging business is the easy part. In fact, you can do that in an hour simply by filling out the paperwork for a business license. Nowadays, you can probably file it online. That paperwork to start your business is the easy part. What’s difficult is to build and grow a sustainable business that is financially viable and fulfilling for you.

It is irresponsible to advertise a course by saying “Become a home stager in X hours” or “Become a home stag
er in Y days.” For these staging training programs, it’s about their student churn rate.

It takes so much more to build a business properly. Any business owners will tell you this. These training programs are not focusing themselves on helping stagers creating a strong foundation to build a business that will last. Their priority is in their churn rates.

They are simply trying to recruit more students by taking advantage of unaware buyers and selling them a false promise that it is easy and quick to become a home stager. By selling them a training that doesn’t prepare them for the real working life of a home stager, they are doing the industry a huge disservice. These programs can range for a few hundred dollars to several thousands, which is not a small sum for a lot of people.

As someone who is shopping for the right training or certification program, you want to take stock of what’s most important to you so that you can commit to follow through your training, put everything in practice to start working as a home stager successfully in your market.

Your Personal and Professional Goals

Will this training or certification program help you build a strong foundation to start your career? Will you feel prepared to approach realtors and home sellers and start pitching your services to them? Will this program give you tools to help you define your goals (both personal and professional), vision and an action plan for your business?

It is important to take your personal goals into consideration. After all, your business should serve your life, not the other way around.

By starting a new business, this is going to impact your lifestyle tremendously. Owning a business is different than having a 9-to-5 job working for someone else. When you work for a company, you are well compensated for everything you do at work. At home, you are done. You don’t need to think about work and your day is done.

It is different when you run your own business. You are responsible for every aspect of the business. If you have a family, this will also impact your family life. Not to mention the financial impact of starting a business. It will impact your personal assets and even put them at risk if you are not careful.

What Kind of Learning Style Do You Respond to the Most? What is the program format?

Some people prefer in-person learning, where you can have live interactions with your teacher and fellow classmates.

Some people prefer the flexibility of on-demand (online) learning can provide, where you can access your course from anywhere in the world and without time restrictions. If you are currently working full time or have family responsibilities, online learning may provide that flexibility that you are looking for.

There are many great advantages to online learning:

• You can set your own schedule, especially if you have a lot of family commitment or are in a full-time job right now

• It can be more affordable than in-person training where you have to miss work to fly or travel to the training itself. If you are going out of town, you will also need to pay for accommodations, travel and food, etc. That all adds up to the costs of attending the training. So you can’t just look at the face value of the tuition. You have to consider the hidden costs of attending an in-person training vs. taking the training in the comfort of your own home.

• Online programs allow you to review the materials over and over within your access period. Any questions you ask in the private classrooms are also recorded, so you can always refer back to the course if need to during your access period.

• You get to meet stagers from all over and find your business BFF that you can talk to and troubleshoot your staging businesses with

What is your availability and commitment level?

This is important to take into consideration, especially if you are doing a training program online. With in-person training program, it is easier to follow through because you are able to block out X days to show up in person to get through the training.

With on-demand trainings, they are usually self-paced. You have to set your own schedule to commit yourself to work through the courses and show up for office hours (if offered by the program).

Resources & Support You will Receive as a Student

In our Professional Home Stager Certification Program, we include weekly group coaching calls and 1:1 sessions because from my personal experiences in building a 6-figure staging business, interviewing top stagers and teaching internationally in the past few years, the most successful stagers are the ones who have support.

This means that they have someone to discuss and mastermind with when they run into challenges in running their businesses. Or they have a mentor to turn to for advice. This is why we built coaching and mastermind into our Home Stager Certification Program.

While you are choosing the right training programs, you want to outline what is important for you. For example, the support you will receive during the program, after you finish the program, etc.

Quality of the Instructors

There were quite a few training programs that were ran by people who never owned staging businesses. Or were very vague about their staging business background.

Unfortunately, we had encountered this when we hired student coaches as well. We had applicants who had never owned a staging business applied for our Student Coach position. They have done a few staging training courses and they felt that was enough for them to coach stagers. As Simon Cowell would say: “that would be a No for me.” ‍♀️

Luckily, this is less true now because there are more and more working stagers getting into the education space, which is great for everyone. (We are always looking for teachers too!) But this is still something to keep in mind when you are shopping for the right program for you.

Do they teach industry experiences?

Staging is a service-based business, so it is important that you are going to get industry experiences learned through actual working experiences.

There are a lot nuances in working with real estate clients. Not everyone is selling their homes because of happy occasions. They may be going through person traumas like divorces, deaths in the family, foreclosures, etc.

You may be dealing with very emotional clients who are going to take their emotions out on yo
u. There are delicate situations to address. You also have to understand how your local real estate market works so that you can work well with your realtor clients.

This is why when we program live workshops or invite people to come in to teach their courses, we focus on inviting working stagers who are experienced in the industry, have built credible staging businesses and share the same vision as we do when it comes to staging education. We want students to have immediate takeaways through the courses and are able to immediately apply these learnings into their home staging businesses straight away.

The Training Style

It is important to take the training style of the instructors into consideration. I’ve taken training where I find the instructor’s teaching style confusing. While the content was good, it was difficult to absorb the teaching.

For our program, I recommend potential students to listen to a few episodes of my podcast, or watch any free training we may offer at the time. This helps potential students to gauge if they gel with the teaching style.

If none of these are available from the training you are looking at, you can also look at their social media. A lot of training schools or home staging coaches have shared videos of them speaking, teaching snippets, etc. You can watch a few and see if they are the right instructors/vibe for you.

The Content of the Staging Training or Certification Program

This is obviously super key, because if the content is quite fluffy, you will be better off taking that money for a nice vacation. You want to look at their course outline, to see what is covered in the training or certification program.

At a minimum, the program should cover:

• What is home staging vs. other interior fields like interior design, interior decorating, etc.

• What makes a good staging project

• Foundational business skills that includes the legal and financial ramifications of running a business. This is very important. We have seen new stagers not understanding the financial implications or risks that their businesses may have on their personal assets. Or they are operating without insurance, or have no contracts, etc. which can be easily resolved.

  • Both the liability insurance and contract combined would offer their business 99% of protection needed (we covered this in a podcast episode with Allie Moore, our attorney partner who contributed the legal aspect of our 5-Figure Floor Plan business foundation course).

• Basic interior styling and staging principles

• Staging business models: what are the different types of services offered and what do their workflows look like, etc.

• How to operate your staging business

• How to market your staging business

• How to buy, build, maintain, move, store your staging inventory

• Staging project installations

• Dealing and providing customer service to your real estate clients

If the course has been accredited by the industry association, for example, like Real Estate Staging Association (RESA) in the US, or Home Staging Association (HSA) in the UK and Ireland, then the course provider is put through a verification process by the association.

We went through the accreditation process for both associations and both processes were quite lengthy. I think it took us about eight months to receive our accreditation from RESA, where there was an application, review and vetting process.

Specifically, we submitted our 5-Figure Floor Plan staging business foundation course to RESA and someone from RESA went through the course with a fine-tooth comb to check off the 61 required topics that we had to cover in the course.

This is why going by the education providers that staging associations have vetted are usually the safer choices since they are verified by a governing body of the industry. Even so, you should still do your research and own vetting to decide if it is the right one for you.

Is the Training Content Current?

While design and business theories stay fairly the same over the years, trends and the macro environment do change fairly quickly, especially in the last few years. Home buyers are also changing. Generation Z is now entering the home buying market as first-time home buyers, and their buying behaviors are changing the way we do business in real estate.

For example, inclusivity, diversity, gender fluidity, mental health are important social values for today’s first-time Gen Z home buyers. These are not just marketing buzzwords.

You may be doing a home visit and the home seller’s teenage son prefers to be addressed with the pronoun “they.”

You wouldn’t want to offend the home seller by addressing their son with the wrong pronoun, right? Then you will lose both of the staging job and the realtor client.

Gen Zs are also buying homes with their friends, this means that every bedroom in the home needs to be a primary bedroom since everyone will be homeowners.

As stagers, we need to be in-tune with these changes in our society, so that our staging doesn’t feel outdated, exclusive or offensive to our clients.

At Staged4more, it is important for us to continuously update the content as often as we can, so that our students are getting the latest information. There are course updates plotted out on our work roadmap, so that we can make sure that we are moving with the times.

One of our signature courses, 6-Figure Floor Plan, is getting a remodel right now, only after three years of its initial rollout. Many trainings on the market have been around for a long time and they are not being updated, despite they are very well-known training programs in the market. This is one of the key feedbacks we’ve heard from our students who came from other programs. We’ve taken those feedback to heart.

What’s the Difference Between Home Staging Training, Courses, Certifications, Accreditation, Designations, etc.??? It’s Confusing!

Actually, nothing . No difference at all.

Home staging is an unregulated industry. There are staging associations now that offer an accreditation process, but the training schools come up with their own names and acronyms to attract students.

All the so-called home staging certifications, accreditations, designations are all creations of the training schools. It is mostly used as a marketing strategy for schools to enroll more students.

There is also no such thing as a license for home stager. You may need to get a business license locally to operate legally (some states don’t require a business license), but that’s completely different than “a staging license.” There is no such thing.

This kind of marketing practice was also why I struggled for a long time until I finally feel we can build a credible and solid Professional Home Stager Certification Program for stagers. One of our team members kindly reminded me that since it is my business, I can create the kind of Certification Program I want. So I built one that spans multiple months where our students can dive into multiple courses, workshops, mastermind, mentorship, accountability and accountability.

Yeah, it does feel a bit crazy to offer a Home Stager Certification program that is multiple months, comparing to our competitors’ courses that are usually three days!

But I love our students who have committed to the program. They find the format supportive and nourishing. They feel more confident in going out and get clients, build their businesses, creating key systems and structure for their staging businesses. And that’s the kind of Certification Program that I feel comfortable offering. It is important for me not only to help people to start their businesses, but also be able to grow them!

Focus on the content and what you will get out of the course, and not the name or the acronyms you are going to get.

Your client wants someone who can deliver, not a basic stager with a fancy acronym after the name and zero skills.

In the 11+ years of operating my business in the San Francisco Bay Area, not once my clients asked me where I got my training/ accreditation/ certification, etc. from. Do you think people go to Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant and asks where he got this chef credential from? No, right? People look at online reviews, industry reputations, his TV shows, industry ranking, the number of Michelin stars, etc. to decide if they want to dine at his restaurants. It’s the same idea.

Client wants someone who can deliver. So be the one who can!

Pricing of the Staging Training or Certification Program

Many people prioritize this as their #1 concern when it comes to choosing the right training program for them.

But is the goal here to pick the cheapest training program?

Or, is it picking the RIGHT program that will help you grow and build a vibrant and thriving home staging business that you will be proud of?

More importantly, a well-structured training program or certification will help you get that return on investment back within the first year in business.

It is worth it to do the research to see if the program you choose aligns with your values, goals and what you want to accomplish in your new career as a home stager.

It is important to be realistic in terms of expectations and understanding what you are getting yourself into, especially starting a whole new business that you are not familiar with. The more you can find out before you diving into this exciting new career, the better.

Lastly, staging is a very fulfilling career choice!

I certainly don’t want to scare you away from getting into this incredible business!

If you have a chance to listen to our podcast episodes, where I interview top stagers in the business, you can hear their love and passion for this business through their voices!

If you enjoy working in the home & interior space, meeting and working with a lot of interesting personalities, the quickness of staging projects (comparing to interior design projects, which can take months and even years) and making a difference in your clients’ lives, then this is an incredible career choice for you!