Guides / Selling
Empty property, no furniture: does staging beat a refresh?
Staging dresses a room. A refresh fixes it. If you can only do one, that distinction decides it.
5 min read
Empty properties are hard to sell for two reasons. Buyers struggle to judge scale without furniture, and every flaw is fully visible with nothing standing in front of it. Staging solves the first problem. A refresh solves the second.
The comparison
| Home staging | Pre-sale refresh | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical cost | £3,000–£8,000 for 6–8 weeks | £3,800–£17,000, one-off |
| What it fixes | Empty rooms, sense of scale | Tired paint, faults, dirt, garden |
| Lasts | Until the hire ends | Permanently |
| Helps at viewings | Yes | Yes |
| Helps at survey | No | Somewhat |
If you can only do one
Refresh. Staged furniture in a room with yellowed paint and a scuffed skirting reads as a property someone is trying to dress up. Fresh paint and clean floors in an empty room reads as a blank, well-kept space — which is exactly what buyers of empty properties are looking for.
When staging genuinely earns its money
- Large, awkwardly proportioned rooms where scale is hard to read
- New-build and high-value flats where buyers expect a show-home standard
- Open-plan spaces where the intended use isn't obvious
Do the fabric first. Dress it second, and only if the room still doesn't explain itself.
The Presentable way
We do all of the above as one job: painting, small repairs, carpets, garden tidy and a deep clean, for one fixed price, finished in less than two weeks.