I have assisted to stage homes as far away as Malaysia! Virtual staging is a large portion of my daily routine, as I offer Custom Virtual Curb Appeal Strategies, all via email. The only drawback is that you have to have really impressive communication skills. You have to tell them why you are making the suggestion, not just the suggestion. Homeowners, once they understand why, will complete the follow thru. I spend a fair amount of time explaining at first, then they figure out I'm not full of it, and things go smoother with subsequent suggestions.

Sure saves on gas!

Michelle

www.featurethisdotdotdot.com

I take visa and mastercard. I offer virtual mock-ups of most of my ideas, so it's an easier sell on the concept.

I charge $125 per room in most cases. but I do negotiate on easier rooms, like the bathrooms. I also send them pics on ideas for accessories, so they understand the scale I am suggesting and don't waste their money on items too small to be  picked up  in the photographs for the MLS photos. The accessories need to be large pieces, and that throws them a bit. It can be time consuming, as it takes about 4 hours per room when you factor in all the searching I do for suggested scale, the mock-up time, and the communicating back and forth. What is great, however, is I can do it in my jammies at three am if I feel like it.

It is time consuming, but I find it rewarding. I personally take their credit card # before I begin, do the consult, and then I charge them out after I get feedback. That way, if they want adjustments, I can charge them for it with the total at one time.

I buy a lot of programs... because no one program does everything I want it to do. And I am NOT the computer genius of the millennium, I assure you. It has taken nearly two years working at it every day to get the hang of it.

For color accuracy, I tend to use the $13 ben moore color viewer program. I know those colors and how they work like the back of my hand. So that's the easiest. But it is very glitch-ridden. Certain colors don't save, others are not recognized by their proper spelling. It's not the best, but I know how to get around most problems. I have never been able to shake my reliance on that program. It was the only thing I had for years, and it's my ninny.

Better Homes and Gardens  Home Designer 7.0 proved to be quite exciting, but extremely technical, and I gave up on that one. That is more like what they use on Hidden Potential on HGTV. It was too time consuming, but the options were unlimited. Lots of landscape plants and hardiness zones, so if I was doing a house in Montana, I could select plants that were correct for the zone. But you have to build the house in 3-d, and that just plain sucked. But if you do delve into it, you can revamp an kitchen, outfitted with name-brand appliances and new cabinetry, name brand flooring and carpet...the whole nine yards. It is very useful, and if I did nothing but renovations, it would be excellent. The accessories are fabulous. But you have to build the room from the ground up to scale to be able to insert anything.

Now my favorite is Picture It, by Chief Architect. It is easier in many respects. But you can't peruse the color library by name... and that is a huge downfall. If I am looking for a particular BM or SW color, I have to do it by color family. For instance, Black Bean Soup is a shutter color I use a lot by BM. I can't key in the name or number. I have to choose the color family. It's a blackish red purple. I have to look in warm dark colors, red colors, and red-brown colors, just to find it. And there is no name, only color chips. So if a client has a color on the wall I don't know, I have to find the color on www.colorcharts.org, determine it's undertone via an unreliable computer monitor, and then go hunt it by it's color family, and HOPE I can find it. It is very, very problematic, and can take up quit a bit of time.  Having fan deck doesn't help find them. It helps me determine the soundness of my color scheme, but it does not aid my search, as the names and numbers are not searchable.It is very, very problematic, and can take up quit a bit of time.

Picture it is designed to work in 2-dimension, like a photo. All you have to master is perspective, and I am pretty good with that from being a long-time art student.

So, if I can swing it, I work on color with Ben Moore's Color Viewer, then save and close that program, and open it in Picture It, and alter whatever I need to (like add new brick, or concrete, or new doors. Then, it goes back to Color Viewer, and the color gets tweaked. Sometimes a photo gets saved, re-cut in the colro zones I need to tweak, and reloaded like that dozens of times to acheive the result I am hell-bent on getting.

And when I need something true black, I have to load it in regular old Paint. No black is as black as that program's black. Everything else is charcoal gray when you try to lay down black.

When I first started, it took 2 or three days to get one room out. Now I am down to 2 hours for easy stuff, the 4 hours for harder rooms.

It's not simple, but it can be invaluable for conveying a truly custom plan. I don't feel it is helpful to show people pictures of other people's stuff. They need to see thier own things tweaked in their own rooms, or they can't relate and feel gypped, and delivering value is always my #1 priority

I am sure their are better programs out there for more money than I am willing to spend. But they are probably even MORE technical, and I am not too swift when it gets really hairy. So I use what I know I can use.

If you are going to attempt to add visualization to your service, it takes unlimited patience and tons of practice. I Cannot  fathom the number of cuss words I have screamed at this monitor over the last two years. But I made it out alive and now it helps me to help others. I'd do it all again though. It is essential in a visual business such as ours, in my opinion.

But at the very least, I'd get the BM color viewer. That was my mainstay for a LONG time, and I still use it whenever can. I eventually figured out how to master it to draw my own  teensy plants, and make artwork for the walls, and accessories on the furniture. It's simple, but glitchy, so save EVERYTHING and write down the colors as you go. Otherwise, when you close and re-open, they might be plain white, and you have to re-plug the colors you used in the first place.

~Michelle

Leah - That's the very best way to go about it. By matching their elements to a fan deck that you also have access to, it really can be a custom palette that is accurate. As a color consultant tethered to a Benjamin Moore retail location, I would often send clients home with a fan deck, or a wood stain brochure, and have them match the element in question, it and bring it back. They may say they have a mahogany floor, but they neglect to mention it has walnut stain, changing the whole vision in my head of a mahogany-colored hardwood. They may say they have hideous blue bathroom tile, when it is really a warm gray with a blue-green cast, you know, that elusive spa blue everyone wants...and the pink walls are just making it LOOK ugly.

There are ways of getting around actually being on-site, and still give color-accurate advice. Just be sure they explain ther lighting situation...so you are not looking at the color under incandescent, and they are actually leaving up the flourescents. That will screw everything up!

And thanks for the compliment, Kathy.  :)

~Michelle