The Staging Studio is the real deal. The more I read about them, the more I found reasons to like them. The icing on the cake was their 4000 member Facebook Group which is active with a few posts a day. Staging Studio ranked #2 in our best home staging courses analysis.
“⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The real deal”
✔ Refunds offered
✔ From $750
✔ Bonus materials
✔ Payment plans
✔ Secure Payments
✔ Instant Access
The Staging Studio
The training and resources available at the Staging Studio were originally created for the owner’s own home staging business, which they have owned since 2007, so you know everything has been tried and tested over the years.
Their home staging company has been named a “Top 5 Staging Company” in North America, and they have staged over $2 billion in real estate (which to be honest is a bit of a weird claim, but it gives you an idea that they have done somewhere between 40 and 40,000 properties 🤷♀️ )
Staging Studio offers both online courses in video format, and also in-person learning experiences at their San Antonio warehouse. When learning in person, you’ll have the opportunity to train with the team, and stage a vacant and occupied homes.
Online video is a format some people love, and others hate. It makes skimming material hard if you just want to get the main points, but since home staging is a visual/creative career, the video can really help cement ideas & concepts in your mind. When choosing a home staging course, ask yourself, do you want to sit and watch, sit and read, or be hands-on in person?
Something unique to the Staging Studio is that they donate 10% of every training package to a good cause.
Home Staging Courses at the Staging Studio:
There are three levels of home staging certification provided by the Staging Studio:
- Pro Level
- Expert Level
- Master Level (In person in San Antonio)
The Staging Studio offers three packages:
| Course | Pricing Options |
|---|---|
| Pro | $750 or 5 payments of $159 |
| Expert | $1250 or 5 payments of $259 |
| Master | $3150 or 5 payments of $639 |
Since we here at HomeStagingReviews.com are mainly interested in online home staging courses, we’ll take a closer look at the Pro and Expert level courses, and ignore the Master Level one. If you happen to live near San Antonio and are interested in an in-person home staging course, you can find more information on this in the Staging Studio warehouse.
Pro Level Staging Course
This course covers the following topics:
- Interior design principles
- How to stage both vacant and occupied homes
- How to select the right paint
- How to increase curb appeal
- Case studies (plus scripts) to use when conducting consultations
- Downloadable training manual
- Plus more
You’ll also get your Staging Design Professional™ certification, and 10% of your course fee with be donated to helping women entrepreneurs around the world.
For a more in-depth Staging Studio review on this particular course, scroll down to the Material section where we dive deeper.
Expert Level Staging Course
This course covers everything in the Pro level course, plus:
- Ten cheap ways to grow your home staging business
- How you could get discounts at retail stores
- The pros and cons of owning a home staging inventory
- How you should charge for your services
- How to build trust and credibility
- Our thoughts on home staging accreditation
- Why you should register your home staging business
- What you need to get started
For the creative ones amongst us, this course may be a little dry. Who wants to learn about registering a business?! But it’s all important content, which is definitely worth learning before you go too far down your journey of owning a home staging business.
Staging Studio Review:
Price: Staging Studio courses are at the slightly higher end of the scale, but they have great payment plans available which make these courses affordable to most people.
Looking for a cheaper home staging course? Read our Home Staging Institute review or visit their website.
Payment Plans: As mentioned above, the Staging Studio allows for all course payments to be spread out over 5 months, with one payment per month. This brings the monthly cost for the online home staging courses down to $159 and $259.
The in-person home staging course drops to $639 per month, for 5 months as well.
Refund Policy: The Staging Studio refund policy as per their website is “We are so confident that this course will be invaluable to you, that if you are dissatisfied with the training, we offer a full refund”.
Although that sounds good, it would be good to see something more structured like “100% Money Back Guarantee within 30 days, no questions asked”. Such a firm commitment is missing from the Staging Studio website.
UPDATE: We spotted a 100% 1 Year Money back guarantee badge at the bottom of their homepage (as of May 2020), so that puts the Staging Studios refund policy as one of the best in the industry.
Material: The Pro course is our favorite Staging Studio course, so that’s what we’ll review here.
(The Expert level is just a little too pricey for us at $1250, but if your income can stretch to this course then it’s no doubt better! The Master level won’t be reviewed as it is hands-on, and we made this website to primarily focus on online home staging courses).
There are 11 modules in the Pro Course:
- Module 1 – Interior Design Concepts
- Module 2 – Curb Appeal
- Module 3 – The A to Z on Art
- Module 4 – Buyer Perceptions
- Module 5 – Targeting the Buyer
- Module 6 – Interior Design Concepts 2
- Module 7 – Interior Design Concepts 3
- Module 8 – Complete Color Training
- Module 9 – Room-by-Room
- Module 10 – Occupied Staging
- Module 11 – Vacant Staging
More detailed information on what is in each of these modules can be seen on the Professional Level course page over at the Staging Studio.
There are also a small number of items outside of these core modules that you will be access too when you purchase the Pro Course. These are:
- A student manual that you can download and print. You can use this to fill in the blanks as you watch the training videos.
- Short quizzes at the end of each video
- Assignments (which are not graded. They are designed to reinforce what you have learnt)
- Case study of a vacant stage including a walk-through with a detailed discussion of the planning process.
- Access to a home staging certification logo to display on your website and social media
Bonuses: The Staging Studio doesn’t offer any “bonus” material, but does offer a number of “resources” with each course, which is pretty much the same thing. So for the sake of this Staging Studio review, we’ll consider these resources bonus material. Because let’s be honest, taking “bonus” material onto a course is just a marketing tactic to make the course look more valuable.
- The home staging contract the founders use in their own home staging business
- 100-page downloadable workbook
- 50 forms and checklists
Outside of the actual home staging courses, the Staging Studio also offers a number of free home staging resources. These are: design video series, 5-minute sales pitch, top tech tools, business quick-start checklist, color training, goal-setting webinar, art hanging hack, how to stage a bed, staging toolkit, and a guide on home staging pricing. You can get these all free from the Staging Studio website without signing up for a course (although you’ll need to give them your name and email address to access these, so expect a few sales emails in the weeks after).
Reviews: There are plenty of Staging Studio reviews and testimonials on their website, all with glowing remarks. What’s nice about the Staging Studio reviews in particular is they are all accompanied by the name of the person giving the review, their name, and the home staging company they work for.
You can be confident they are 100% legit.
Value: I’ve been involved in home staging for a number of years now, and am still tempted to refresh my skills with the Staging Studio home staging course. I’m most interested in the Pro course, and at $750 it looks to provide great bang-for-buck.
Final word
We hope you’ve enjoyed our Staging Studio review. We’ve enjoyed delving into this company and their courses a lot.
In our Best Home Staging Course guide of 2024, Staging Studio came in second place.
Their website is modern, unlike many of the home staging websites which look like they were made in 1999. This gives us more confidence that the course material is up to date, and wasn’t something that was written years ago and is being resold over and over and over (and over).
Do you have something to add to our Staging Studio review? Please let us know at team@homestagingreviews.com – we’d love to add your comments, insights, and reviews to this page. We want our site to grow to offer the best home staging course reviews!