Pop-Up Staging Furniture Gets Modern Twist

DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS | FRIDAY, MAY 27, 2016

Staging professionals are revisiting pop-up furniture, as many of the new options appear more like the real thing. Lightweight, flat-pack faux furniture is helping potential buyers envision what an otherwise empty house would look like furnished and real estate professionals are finding the pop-up furnishings are easier to store and deliver to properties.

You can find more staging tips on our Styled, Staged & Sold blog.

A recent open house in New York City was filled with contemporary furniture that was actually made of corrugated plastic, from the large boxy sofa to the desk with faceted legs, sculptural coffee table, bed, and even the artwork hanging on the walls.

For those who don’t want to spend a lot on renting furniture for staging, the faux options are seeming like a good fit, according to a recent article by The New York Times. What’s more, home owners say they like the stand-ins better than virtual staging since home buyers can see it when they visit the property rather than just viewing properties of what the empty space would look like online.

Companies such as inFormed Space are offering plastic furniture for home buyers who are looking for a more affordable solution to outfitting an empty space for staging.

“I love conventional staging; it always looks lovely,” Douglas Pinter, who owns inFormed Space, told The New York Times. “But it’s very expensive to execute, because of logistical costs,” notably the storage and delivery costs often associated. His company offers lightweight, collapsible pieces that can easily be delivered and stored.

Another company named Dandy Pack, formerly NextStage Furniture, offers flat-pack furniture made of cardboard and that is then covered with slipcovers for home staging.

Dandy Pack’s reusable products include armchairs ($246 each), sofas ($341) and beds (starting at $255), covered with slipcovers in a variety of colors. The company also makes a nonfunctional dining table out of wood veneer ($326) that is held up by built-in faux chairs.

“They were shipped to my office, and I threw them into the back of a cab,” Lee Presser, an associate broker with the Corcoran Group, told The New York Times. “I was totally set up in less than an hour.”

Source: “Pop-Up Home Staging,” The New York Times (May 26, 2016)