8 Tips for Staging Your Vacation Rental for Maximum Appeal
How To Stage Your Home With Style
In the short-term rental industry, beauty often wins out over features and functionality. After all, most people are choosing vacation rentals based upon a handful of photos, so those that are the most visually appealing typically have an edge over those that aren’t as focused on surface appearance. This is why staging your home for photos is such an important, and yet often overlooked, step in the process of listing your home or updating your rental listing.
If the staging process has you stumped, we have 8 great tips to help you have a successful photoshoot on your property and bring in tons of potential guests from photos alone.
#1: Ensure Your Personal Decor and Items are Put Away
While you’re working on staging your vacation rental for listing photos, the first thing on your list of priorities should be to put away all personal decor and items that make it look too “lived-in”. Guests want a clean slate to imagine themselves in, and that can be difficult if there are too many personal photos or possessions lying around in photos. This is why an owner’s closet is so important–you’ll have a secure place to put your belongings and it’s easy to bring them out during owner stays without forgoing personal decorations entirely.
#2: Don’t Forget the Outdoor Areas
Making a good first impression on your listing photos isn’t just about the inside of your property. The outside should also receive the same attention, with the grass neatly trimmed and the exterior of the home looking freshly-cleaned as well. No one wants to find a beautiful rental, only to arrive and find the outdoor areas to be a cluttered mess, so take care of this before photographing. Potential guests will show more interest if they’re able to see well-crafted photos of the exterior and get a feel for the neighborhood.
#3: Give the Home a Nice Deep Clean Beforehand
Cleaning is of the utmost importance before staging your home for professional photos. In fact, it’s never a bad idea to deep clean the entire property, just to give it a little extra shine. Grime and dust will show up in photos more often than you think, and the easiest way to avoid that is hire professional cleaners to come in and give the home a good once-over.
#4: Provide Lots of Lighting Options
There’s nothing more fundamental in photography than having good lighting, and though any photographer worth their salt will have their own lighting setup, it never hurts to provide them with plenty of options. While natural light is always best, providing a few different lamps and overhead lighting sources can also make a big difference in the quality of your listing photos.
#5: Don’t Go Overboard with Decor
Unless the main draw of your home is its maximalist decor, your vacation rental should not be filled with an overwhelming amount of decorations and memorabilia. Too much decor can make your vacation rental look cluttered and unwelcoming, especially if that decor is to your specific taste rather than for maximum vacation rental appeal. Keep it to a few decorative items placed thoughtfully around your rental and let guests paint your blank slate with their vacation dreams.
#6: Highlight Warm and Inviting Spaces
While staging your rental, make note of the spaces that are most warm and inviting. This will give you the opportunity to add in some touches to make it even more so for guests, such as by adding in a cozy blanket on the couch next to the fireplace or turning your bathroom into its own little spa area. These areas photograph well, allowing you to highlight the spots where guests will be able to get in a little bit of rest and relaxation.
#7: Focus on Important Details
Some rooms are more important than others when it comes to staging. For example, prioritizing the kitchen over the garage is a safe bet, since guests will most likely be more interested in the amenities that the kitchen offers over the garage area, which is likely to be barren with space for parking cars. So instead of getting caught up in the unimportant details, focus mostly on the parts of the home that will get the most use and that guests will be most interested in.
#8: Clear Away the Clutter
Our final tip for staging your vacation rental is to ensure that all of the clutter in the home is cleared away before photography begins. During your owner stays, it’s also a good idea to dedicate a spot for clutter so it can be quickly cleared away when the high season gets going. No one wants to enter their vacation rental and find clutter, and you won’t want any in your listing photos either.
Check Out Our Blog for More Vacation Rental Tips
Staging your home is more than just making it look nice for guests–it’s a fundamental part of taking stunning listing photos that will bring in potential guests. With these tips up your sleeve, staging is a much easier process, and we hope it’ll lead to some great listing photos.
Hoping to find out more ways to improve your short-term rental listing? Check out our blog on creating a killer listing title or take a look at our advice for writing the best Airbnb photo captions out there.