Virtual staging styles — see the room before you choose

Showing each style in a different room would tell you about the photography rather than the style. If one style got a bright bay-windowed lounge and another got a narrow back room, you would be comparing rooms, not furniture. So we hold the room still and change only what a removal van could carry.

Read the first line of each style. It says which properties that style is for, which is the question you are actually trying to answer.

Pick this if someone still lives in the property and the decoration is perfectly nice as it is. It is the honest default for an occupied house, and it is the one we would choose ourselves in most cases.

What you get. Everything else on this page is a fixed look. This one has no look of its own. We take the palette from the room in front of us — the wall colour, the floor, the doors and skirting, the curtains if they are staying — and choose furniture that belongs with it. Magnolia walls and an oak floor get warm mid-tones and timber, not cold grey. A grey-and-white new build gets grey and white. Two rooms ordered on this option come back looking nothing like each other, because the two rooms were different.

Suits. Occupied family homes where the seller is still living there and would rather the photographs still looked like their house. Rooms with a strong existing feature you cannot argue with — a feature wall, patterned floor tiles, a fitted kitchen in a particular colour, original woodwork. Also good where an agent wants a room tidied and furnished rather than transformed.

Think twice if the existing decor is the problem. If a room is dated in a way you are actively trying to move buyers past, matching it will only reinforce it. Choose a named style instead, and consider clearing the room first so the new furniture is not competing with the old.

Pick this if the property is a new build or has just been refurbished, and you want the photograph to look current without committing to a strong personality.

What you get. Low, straight-edged furniture. A flat-armed sofa in mid grey or charcoal, a slim coffee table on black metal or pale oak legs, a large plain rug, a floor lamp, one or two framed prints hung level. The palette runs grey, white and black with a single wood tone. It is a spare room rather than a busy one: a handful of objects, all of them deliberate, nothing decorative for its own sake.

Suits. New-build houses and apartments, refurbished terraces and flats, city apartments, and anything being sold on the promise that a buyer can move in without doing a thing. It photographs well in square rooms with plain walls, which is what most new build gives you.

Think twice if the room has cornicing, picture rails, a bay or an original fireplace. Modern furniture in a Victorian room tends to read as a rental rather than a home. Classic or country will sit better in that space.

Pick this if you do not know who the buyer will be. It is the option that annoys the fewest people, and it is the one to choose when a property has to appeal broadly rather than sharply.

What you get. Oatmeal, biscuit, taupe, soft cream and aged linen. A deep, curved-back sofa in a heavy weave rather than a square-armed one, a round timber coffee table, a wool or jute rug, linen curtains, a couple of plain ceramics and one large plant. Pale to mid timber throughout. There is no black in it, and the contrast is low, so the room reads soft and warm rather than sharp.

Suits. Family houses of almost any age, 1930s semis, bungalows, flats aimed at downsizers, and rooms with good natural light. It is also the fix for a room that photographs cold — north-facing, grey daylight, grey flooring — because the furniture puts the warmth back without anyone repainting a wall.

Think twice if the room is already magnolia or beige from floor to ceiling. Warm furniture against warm walls can sink into the background and the room loses its edges. Modern or cosy monochrome will give the photograph more definition. Worth knowing too: this is a current look rather than a permanent one, so if the property may still be on the market in two years, classic dates more slowly.

Pick this if the room is small, narrow or short of light. It is the sparest of the eight, and empty floor is what makes a small room photograph larger without anyone touching the walls.

What you get. Pale wood throughout: birch, ash, light oak. A low-backed sofa in off-white or pale grey on slim tapered legs, a small round side table, a simple pendant or a tripod lamp, a flat-weave rug with no pile, one plant and almost nothing on the surfaces. Deliberately not much furniture. Every piece sits up off the floor on legs, so the floor runs on underneath it and the room keeps its full size.

Suits. One and two-bedroom flats, city studios, box rooms and second bedrooms, loft conversions, new-build apartments and small terraces. It is the natural choice for the room in the listing that buyers are most likely to worry about being too small.

Think twice if the room is a large reception. This little furniture in a big space reads as under-furnished, and a buyer looking at acres of bare floor starts wondering what the room is for. Warm neutrals or classic will fill a big room more convincingly.

Pick this if the property has period features, or the likely buyer is a family or an older buyer rather than a first-time one. It is the style that dates the slowest.

What you get. Traditional shapes without being fussy about it. A rolled-arm or buttoned sofa in a plain fabric, a wooden coffee table with visible grain, a patterned rug with a border, table lamps rather than floor lamps, pictures hung as a pair, and proper curtains with a heading rather than a blind. The palette is navy, dark green or burgundy against cream and mid-toned wood. Slightly more in the room than modern or Scandinavian, and more symmetrical.

Suits. Victorian and Edwardian terraces, 1930s semis with a bay, townhouses, rectories and former farmhouses, and any room with a chimney breast, cornicing or picture rails. Where the architecture is traditional, traditional furniture stops the photograph arguing with itself.

Think twice if the property is a plain new-build box. Classic furniture implies mouldings, high ceilings and a fireplace, and in a square room with none of those it can look as though something has gone missing.

Pick this if the property is rural, or has beams, flagstones, an inglenook or a range. It is the one style that is meant to look used rather than immaculate.

What you get. Painted and natural timber together. A soft, deep sofa in a plain weave with a throw over one arm, a farmhouse table with chairs that do not quite match, a dresser or a painted sideboard, an armchair angled towards the fire, a wool rug, and a stone or ceramic jug with something cut from the garden in it. The palette is sage, clay, chalky blue and cream against natural wood. More objects than the other styles, arranged as though somebody put them down.

Suits. Cottages, barn conversions, farmhouses, rural bungalows, village properties, and anything with exposed beams, a stone floor or a solid-fuel stove. It also works for a semi-rural family house where the buyer is moving out of a town and buying the idea as much as the building.

Think twice if the property is a city flat. Country furniture in an apartment reads as a holiday let, and buyers notice the mismatch before they notice the room.

Pick this if the property sits at the top of its local market, or its photographs are going up alongside new-build show homes.

What you get. Larger, heavier furniture and more of it. A deep sofa in velvet or a dense weave, a stone or marble-topped coffee table, brass or dark metal on the legs and the lighting, a tall floor lamp, a deep-pile rug, layered cushions, a large mirror and a tall plant or cut stems. The palette is charcoal, ink blue and cream, warmed with brass. It is the most dressed of the eight, and the least floor is left showing.

Suits. Executive detached houses, large period properties, penthouse and riverside apartments, and anything priced near or above the local ceiling. Big rooms need furniture with weight in them, or they photograph as empty rooms with a sofa in the corner.

Think twice if the room is small. We scale furniture to the room rather than the other way round, so in a modest room this style comes back shrunk down, and most of what makes it work is lost. In a small room, Scandinavian or warm neutrals will do more for you.

Pick this if the property is already grey and white, as most UK new builds are, and you want furniture that works with grey flooring, white walls and black handles rather than fighting them. It is our own name for a black, white and grey scheme — monochrome, but softened so it does not photograph cold.

What you get. Black or charcoal frames and legs against white and mid-grey upholstery, then texture to stop it feeling hard: a chunky knit throw, a rug with a real pile, heavy curtains rather than a blind. There is usually one warm element — a timber top or a leather — to keep it from tipping into a showroom. Minimal ornament and a near-black-and-white palette, which gives the photograph strong contrast and makes the edges of the room easy to read.

Suits. New-build flats and houses with grey LVT or grey carpet, converted apartments, city one-beds, and rooms with a lot of glass. It is particularly useful over dark grey flooring, where a warm scheme ends up arguing with the floor.

Think twice if the property is period, or the room has a lot of warm wood in it — the contrast fights the timber. And in a small, dark room a quantity of black furniture will make the space read smaller, not cosier. Scandinavian does the same minimalist job with more light in it.

If you only read one part of this page, read this. A Victorian terrace, a new-build flat and a period cottage do not want the same furniture, and the mismatch is obvious to a buyer even when they could not tell you why.

The first column is the property. The second is where we would start. The third is worth a look before you decide.

None of this is a rule. If a seller loves one of them and it is not the one in the table, use theirs — the listing has to feel like the house they are selling. But do keep one style across the whole property. A Scandinavian living room and a country bedroom in the same set of photographs read as two different homes.

Style is only half the answer. What the furniture is actually doing changes room by room, and in some rooms it matters far more than the palette does.

A styles page is exactly where a reader starts to suspect the room is being invented, so it is worth being blunt about the limits.

The style changes the furniture. It never changes the room. Walls keep their colour and their position. Windows keep their size, their frame and the view through them. Doors stay open or closed as photographed. Radiators, sockets, switches, skirting, fitted units and fireplaces stay exactly where they are. Ceilings do not rise and rooms do not get wider to accommodate a bigger sofa.

That is also why some of the advice above says think twice. If a style would only work in a room with higher ceilings, we cannot give the room higher ceilings — we can only tell you to pick a different style.

UK estate agents are under a general duty not to mislead. That duty covers photographs as much as floor areas and tenure, and it does not disappear because an image was edited rather than staged with real furniture.

Our position is simple. A staged photograph shows what a room could hold. A cleared photograph shows the room the buyer is actually buying, without the seller’s belongings in the way. Neither should ever show a room the property does not have.

That is why the architecture is fixed rather than merely discouraged from moving. It is also why we recommend labelling staged images in the listing. It costs nothing, it heads off complaints, and buyers do not object to a photograph that is honest about being an illustration — they object to arriving at a viewing and finding a different house.

Reading about furniture is a poor substitute for seeing it in your own room. Send one photograph and the style you are leaning towards, and you can judge it on the property in front of you rather than on ours. If two styles are in contention, name both.