You’ve sanded, filled holes and repaired damaged wood. You took hours to carefully pick that perfect Fusion Mineral Paint colour to elevate the look of that amazing antique piece you found while furniture picking. Now what? The hard part – selling your newly transformed painted furniture project to pay for your next one! How do you set yourself up for a quick and easy sale? Staging and styling your furniture for a profitable sale can be challenging if you aren’t sure of the basics on how to style and stage furniture.  Today we are sharing with you our best tips for styling and staging furniture.

1. Create a dedicated space to stage your furniture in.

No matter where you are, be it inside a home or at a studio, finding that one wall to shoot your pieces against is extremely helpful. This can be your go-to place to shoot all of your different products, from dressers to tables and even smaller pieces like mirrors and chairs. A lot of our Fusion Mineral Paint merchants who furniture flip in addition to selling paint, prefer to use a clean white backdrop to allow the painted furniture project to pop off of the screen. Other seasoned furniture flippers prefer to have a signature style, such as a rustic wood wall or a distinct color that represents their brand.

2. Realistic backdrops are crucial.

Whatever you decide for your background (Jennylyn shares her Fresco painted background in our staging video below), make sure that it does not compete with your item. What does that mean? It means that you want your furniture piece to be the star of the show (and NOT the background!). It should complement the furniture piece but not take away from it. This is where having photo backdrops come in handy. It is as easy as measuring your space/wall, going to a blinds store and having them make a backdrop that you can set-up and pull down behind your items that you are photographing. This will allow you the flexibility to adjust your backdrop based on the color and design of the item that you finished. The nice thing about backdrops is that it allows you to create a fake environment to take pictures in even if maybe your own room or wall isn’t photo ready! This is a great investment for any furniture flipper.

For example, let’s say you paint a pattern or texture on a piece of furniture such as gold leaf. You definitely do not want a backdrop with a busy pattern behind you. That will take away from your piece of furniture. With photo backdrops, it’s important to choose one that compliments your piece of furniture, not one that competes for your buyer’s attention. By having the right backdrop, your skills for styling and staging furniture will instantly improve.

3. Natural lighting IS your best friend. 

Being based in Toronto, Ontario, we at Fusion understand the frustration that is daylight savings time and winter lighting. And it can be very tempting to turn that flash on. But unless you are very good at photography and own professional lighting kits, do not use that flash. Instead, we strongly advise using natural lighting.

Natural lighting will help you to get that true color as well as texture of your item. It will help with editing as the better your photo is, the less editing you will need to do after. It will also avoid those blaring, bright light spots that bounce off of one spot on your piece of furniture. This can lead to darker areas on other parts. If you feel that the space you have available to shoot in requires some form of artificial lighting, definitely consider taking some photography classes. This will help you understand not only your camera’s capabilities but how to light a space with artificial lighting. It’s not as simple as turning on the flash on a point and shoot camera or even a DSLR. If natural light is difficult for you in your home, you may consider buying an inexpensive lighting kit to help you.

4. Buy inexpensive accents and paint them with complementary Fusion Mineral Paint colors.

Accessories often make or break a look. It’s important to choose pieces in your photos, to help the potential buyer envision that item in their home. Otherwise, they may stare a dresser against a wall and not understand how to decorate around it. One of the best places for fresh accessories for photo shoots are items you can buy at the thrift store. Think old books that you can paint or decoupage in a neutral color to use in different photo shoots. Things like different shapes vases, statues or candles in groups of threes and even statement pieces like a candelabra. Sometimes you have a great accessory but the color doesn’t feel right.  This is where the power of paint comes in and you can easily change an accessory with paint.

One thing I always recommend is investing in high-quality faux flowers. That way you’re not spending money repeatedly on fresh flowers! Also, then you can arrange and change the colours of your flowers based on your painted piece of furniture.

5. Shoot your photos straight on, with no angles, at the level of the project.

Think about how you look at images online. The images that usually grab your attention as photographed clearly and with a strong presence. They almost command you to look at them. While having creative angles or close up detailed shots for extra photos of your wallpaper-lined drawers IS important to showcase, the first photo of your piece of furniture should be a straight on, beauty shot. We call this your hero shot – your BEST photo of your painted furniture project.

In fact, we recommend that you check out our Pinterest boards to get inspired. Head over them and save images that you love and that catch your attention. You’ll probably find a pattern in the ones you save. Then when you stage your pieces, try an emulate a look that you like, personalize it with your favorite accessories. Pinterest is a wonderful source of inspiration. Our Facebook group, Paint It Beautiful, also has ton of incredibly talented stagers in it. Styling and staging furniture is a real technique but it can be learned! Take time to work on it and the efforts will pay off. You will start being able to sell your projects for more and pieces will be flying out the door!

Please do check out Jennylyn’s great video on how she loves styling and staging furniture for Fusion Mineral Paint. It’s full of great examples of some of the tips we talked about. It will even show you how changing an accessory can change the entire feel of your piece of furniture.