“How much do home stagers make?” is one of the top questions for anyone considering becoming a home stager.
It’s only natural – everyone wonders what they might make when they start a new career. We sure did!
If you’re weighing up whether to pursue home staging professionally or just dabble on the side, understanding the earning potential is key. This article doesn’t just give you one blanket number, because that would be misleading. Instead, we’ll walk through the many factors that affect your income, including where you live, whether you run your own business, and how much demand there is in your local market.
We’ll also include real-world pay data and tips on how you can increase your income quickly. At the Home Staging Institute, we’ve helped thousands of students launch and grow profitable businesses, and we’re sharing everything we’ve learned about how much you can actually make in this industry.
While we would love to conclude this article with one simple line, such as “Home stagers make on average $105,000 per year,” it’s really not that simple!
There are so many factors that affect the average home stager’s salary that we can’t give you a simple answer. Your experience, as well as your geographical location, plays a huge role in how much you can earn. Similarly, your reputation also plays a role in being able to charge premium rates.
Let’s take a minute to examine what affects a home stager’s income and how you can grow your home staging salary over time.
Then, we’ll try to answer the question, “How much do home stagers make?” by examining data from real home staging job ads.
What influences your income as a home stager?
Earning factor #1: Your role within the industry
As we explained in our home staging careers blog post recently, there is a range of careers within the home staging industry.
Alternatively, you can start a home staging business. In this case, you most likely won’t pay yourself a fixed salary – you’ll take a share of the profits as drawings.
Earning factor #2: The area you are going into business
The average home stager’s salary is heavily dependent on where you are operating geographically, much like a realtor’s salary.
Home stagers styling $10-million-dollar homes for sale in Los Angeles will need to be at the top of their game and present absolute perfection to their clients. Conversely, homes for sale for $75,000 somewhere like Niagara Falls will be able to demand much less.
In saying that, the cost of living in each area is wildly different. To live in Los Angeles costs a lot more than somewhere like Niagara Falls, so don’t be too disheartened if you’re working primarily at the cheaper end of the market.
Earning factor #3: Competition
In all industries, competition generally drives down prices. If you are the only home stager serving your area, you can demand higher prices. However, if there are four home stagers all competing to win jobs, the downward pressure on the prices you can charge will affect the average salary for home stagers in the area.
Earning factor #4: Your skill level & reputation
Like in any other industry, your home staging salary is heavily dependent on your skill level, experience, and reputation.
This is especially true if you are actually doing the hands-on staging of properties. Other roles, such as a warehouse manager, driver, or admin assistant, aren’t as driven by industry experience.
Earning factor #5: Whether you own the home staging business, or are an employee
If you are starting a home staging business, you can earn more long-term (but more than likely less short-term!)
Earning factor #6: What you charge
We need to put these rates into perspective if you are looking into doing home staging full-time.
If you decide to charge say $32 per hour and did three two-hour home staging consultations each week, you’d be earning $192 per week (or about $768 per month). That’s unlikely enough to be able to cover all your living costs, and you’d be better off getting a full-time job working elsewhere.
Of course, the caveat to this is if you are considering home staging as a side gig. In that case, adding an extra $192 to your income each week might be a good option if you could complete the consultations on weekends and after hours.
You also need to remember that when you run your own home staging business, you’ll be doing lots of work that you don’t actually get paid for. Creating your website, maintaining your portfolio, answering email inquiries, booking appointments, driving to site visits….the list of unpaid work adds up quickly!
So we need to charge more!
Now you see the importance of increasing your rates. If you instead charged $320 for those two-hour consultations, you’ll be doing the same amount of work, but making $960 per week, or approximately $3850 monthly. This is a significant increase, and puts your annual earnings at about $46,000! Now we are talking!
Remember, this is just for consultation and advice. If you can bring in some actual hands-on staging work during this time, that is all additional income on top. A quick $1,000 staging job per month bumps your annual income up to $58,000.
What did we learn? If you are interested in home staging as a side income, and to cover the cost of your morning coffee, a bit of petrol money, and an occasional nice dinner out, then you can charge $30 to $35 per hour.
BUT….if you want to start a successful home staging business, you need to increase your rates significantly. Don’t go below $150 for a two-hour consultation, and understand your local area to understand better how high you can push this rate.
How much do home stagers make?
The average home staging salary is $51,000 per year.
We reviewed hundreds of job postings on StagingJobs.com, Indeed, Linkedin, and Seek to reveal these figures and have pasted a few examples below.
Remember that an average home staging salary is exactly that – an average. This means that some earn $35,000, and others are closer to $100,000. It all depends on the factors above.
Also, remember that the jobs listed below are for employees of home staging businesses. You can significantly increase your income as a home stager by starting your own home staging business or becoming a more senior home stager via a home staging certification course.
| Location | Role Title | Income |
|---|---|---|
| Atlanta, GA | Junior Designer | $25 – $30 an hour |
| Madison Heights, MI | Staging Assistant | $14 – $16 an hour |
| Brookline, MA | Home Staging Assistant | $15 – $20 an hour |
| Renton, WA | Home Staging Furniture Mover | $20 – $23 an hour |
| Seattle, WA | Home Staging Intern | $15 – $26 an hour |
| Port Washington, WI | Warehouse Support | $16 an hour |
| Richmond, VA | Home Stager | $15 an hour |
| Wilsonville, OR | Senior Staging Stylist | $20 – $25 an hour |
| Los Angeles, CA | Senior Home Stager | $20 – $25 an hour |
| Los Angeles, CA | Sales Representative | $38,045 – $156,730 a year* |
| Norfolk, MA | Home Stylist | $20 – $30 an hour |
| San Francisco, CA | Warehouse Organizer / Driver | $18 – $24 an hour |
| Los Angeles, CA | Home Stager | Up to $60 an hour |
| El Monte, CA | Home Staging Assistant | From $13 an hour |
| New York, NY | Home Stylist / Design Consultant | $20 – $30 an hour |
| San Francisco, CA | Home Staging Administrative Assistant | $17 – $20 an hour |
| Union City, CA | Home Stager / Stylist | $33.65 – $45 an hour |
How much do home stagers make per hour?
Home stagers make an average of $25 per hour. This is based on the average salary we saw above, $51,000, and a 40-hour work week.
A typical two-hour home staging consultation should cost between $200 and $800. This means your hourly rate for consultations is $100 – $400, which sounds impressive. However, you also need to account for your time spent travelling to and from the client’s home and the time after the site visit to prepare the report.
How can you earn more as a home stager?
Having a thorough understanding of how to charge for home staging better equips you to earn top dollar.
There are a number of things you can do to ensure your rates stay high and profitable:
- Ensure your website is beautiful and reflects your brand.
- Keep your online portfolio up to date and show off your best work. If you don’t have a portfolio yet, take some before-and-after shots around your house or friends’ and family members’ houses.
- Take a home staging certification course online, to show that you have completed some training in this area and are a trusted professional.
- Seek out larger jobs to boost your rates. In affluent areas, bigger houses can demand twice the rates of small units.
- Ask for written testimonials from all customers, and use these on your website and social media profiles to build trust in your name and brand.
Here’s a real-world example: One of our students in Austin started out charging $150 for consultations and was booking around three per month. After updating her portfolio, adding before-and-after galleries to her site, and collecting five glowing client testimonials, she raised her rate to $300 and started booking six per month. The difference? Confidence, visibility, and perceived value.
Another student in Toronto began networking at real estate agent meetups and quickly doubled her income by securing a single high-end investor who gave her three repeat jobs in six weeks. These aren’t isolated stories – this is what happens when you treat staging like a business, not just a side gig.
Ready to get started?
To learn how to become a certified home stager, click here, otherwise you can dive right into browsing home staging jobs online.
Online home staging courses can be completed in as little as two weeks and will help you start your own home staging business on the right foot.
Once you have your certification, you can review our guide on writing a home staging resume.
