Home-staging — or grooming properties for sale — originated in North America in the 1970s, but reached Ireland only in the late 1990s. The trend has now become so common here that experienced buyers can spot the telltale signs of a dressed home an estate agent’s mile away. Giveaways include the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, the hired chaise longue that jars with the rest of the furniture and the absence of family photographs.
As a result, interior designers, increasingly wary of clichéd makeovers, are going back to basics.
“People have become a lot more design-conscious. The hackneyed tricks of the trade — such as painting everything white and having a loaf of bread in the oven — just aren’t enough any more. People want interiors with personality,” says Helen Roden, of Merrion Square Interiors in Dublin.
Roden and her business partner, Joseph Ensko, create interiors that are more Grand Designs than Changing Rooms. Their latest project, the styling of a new three-bedroom mews on Raglan Lane in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, took eight months to complete. “It was a great project because our only brief was to create a smart, contemporary interior,” says Ensko. “The design isn’t too gender-specific, but because of its sleek glass-and-steel look, we chose pieces to appeal to a younger market.
“To offset the coldness of the limestone floors and steel cladding, we used classic furniture from the 1940s and 1950s and covered the sofas in warm chenilles.”
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He and Roden oversaw the entire interior fit-out, choosing all the flooring, lighting and furniture. “We are constantly sourcing furniture, choosing only what we love, so nothing should look out of place — every piece should look like it was lovingly collected,” Roden says.
The pair begin a job by identifying storage areas. “We are lifestyle-led, so our first consideration is getting the bones of the house right. You begin the cosmetic work only once you’ve struck a balance between living space and storage,” says Ensko.
When remodelling a 1960s-built apartment in the St Ann’s development on Ailesbury Road in Donnybrook, Dublin 4, Roden and Ensko began by introducing new walls with double doors to connect the reception rooms. “The apartment was just a large box, with no real distinction between the rooms, so we had to reconfigure the layout. Our brief was to appeal to an older, downsizing market, so the look is classic period home with elements of art deco. We used chequerboard carpets, silk curtains, pale bleached woods, chandeliers and draped the chairs in rich damasks,” says Roden.
The pair will dress your house to impress, but their prices are more bespoke than off-the-peg. A top-to-bottom transformation will cost about 10% of a house’s market value. Considering that No 44 Raglan Lane, their latest project, is on the market at €2.2m (through Sherry FitzGerald), it’s a hefty fee, but their styling certainly adds value.
“We’ve been told that Raglan Lane has caused a real buzz and that there’s been a huge number of viewings, so you get what you pay for,” says Roden.
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At the other end of the market, demand for staging has cooled, according to Sighle Creagh, of Home Presentations. “I’ve been in business for two years, but this year I got rid of my internet presence. It just wasn’t worth paying another year’s subscription. I started off by staging homes for people who couldn’t do it themselves. My first job was for an older gentleman who was selling up because he was going into a nursing home. I’ve had a few similar jobs, but demand has dried up a little. Now I’m mostly project-managing renovation jobs for clients who are too busy to oversee them themselves,” she says.
Creagh blames the rude health of the market for her business’s malaise: “Houses are just selling themselves,” she says.
Other stylists have been more successful. Peter Flanagan, of Flanagans of Buncrana, a company with showrooms in Donegal and Mount Merrion in Dublin, believes there’s still a role for the home- stager. “Demand for the service is steady and we’ve had a lot of repeat business from developers,” he says. Flanagan stumbled upon the idea of home- staging from hiring props to film and television companies. “It’s a twofold business. We rent to people selling a property and the buyer often likes the furniture and decides to keep it.”
The market for staging is now almost exclusively at the top end, he says. “Anyone can rent furniture, but we recommend that people speak to one of our interior designers first. They know how to stage a house without making it look forced. It’s a fine line. You don’t want people to think that it’s just a way to dazzle them and gloss over defects, but it can benefit buyers and sellers. If a house is too empty or cluttered, people can struggle to imagine what living there might be like.
“For a call-out fee of €200, one of our designers will visit your home and recommend what needs to be done to ready it for sale. The last thing you want to do is spend money on staging a house and introducing furniture that doesn’t suit the house’s style or character. If you spend €2,000, the initial call-out fee is refunded,” he says.
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The company can also give your house a total makeover, subcontracting painters, decorators and gardeners for 1% of the home’s market value.
Estate agents admit that although some of the more elaborate staging ploys — such as parking a sports car in the driveway — have a negligible effect on pricing, the process shouldn’t be discarded.
“There are certain cases where it’s very useful and definitely adds value,” says Denis Kavanagh, of Olivers estate agents in Clonskeagh, Dublin 6.
Kavanagh gives the example of a property on his books at the moment on Knapton Road, Monkstown, that has been rented out unfurnished for the past 12 months. “I advised the vendors to dress it. It’s a great house, split over three levels, with views of Dublin Bay, but without any furniture, it looks sad and bare. We’re putting in sofas, chairs, tables, some artwork and flatscreen televisions. I expect it to easily recoup the cost of renting the furniture,” he says.
As proof, Kavanagh cites other recent sales, where he advised the vendors to stage their houses. “We sold a four-bed semi in Rathfarnham recently that was in poor condition. We added new furniture, put it on the market at €625,000 and eventually sold it for €665,000, a record for the particular development it was in,” he says.
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The service has been so popular, Kavanagh says, that he’s now using it to entice clients to list their houses with his agency. “We have a rental and property management division, so if I’m valuing a house for someone and I know that it could benefit from a makeover, I can offer them the services of our workmen. It has helped us attract quite a bit of business, although one lady liked her house’s new look so much that she decided to stay and we lost the contract to sell the house,” he says.
Roden, of Merrion Square Interiors, advises house-sellers to declutter but not depersonalise. “The house has to have character,” she says. “If it looks like it has been staged to sell and that its owner is merely trying to manipulate potential buyers, it can be a turn-off.”
Merrion Square Interiors, 01 676 1173, www.merrionsquareinteriors.com; Sherry FitzGerald, 01 639 9280, www.sherryfitz.ie; Flanagans, 074 936 2000, www.flanagans.ie; Olivers, 01 260 3496, www.olivers.ie