
Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of virtual staging? Are you looking for a “do-it-all” software that will let you just drag and drop furniture into your photos? Well, unfortunately virtual staging isn’t that easy. Many people often ask us what software we use to do what we do. This article will shed a little light on how it’s all done. We’ve done a lot of investigating, research and development planning to find the highest quality virtual staging possible and this is what we found…
The Talent
There are a lot of things that go into a good quality virtual staging and there is no single piece of software that is capable of making the complex image manipulations on it’s own. Our most valuable resource for virtual staging is our team of talented designers. Virtual Staging Solutions employees a team of highly skilled and trained graphic designers and home stagers, that use a collection of different photo editing and 3D rendering tools on both the Mac and PC operating systems. The software we use ranges from $2,500 to $18,000, as you can imagine this can be some pretty complex software with a steep learning curve. Most of our designers have 5+ years of experience working with the software. Our designers are first required to go through a 1-3 week internal training program that allows us to assess their skills and teaches them learn how to use our collection of software.
Finding the right talent is one of our biggest difficulties, we search world-wide for designers with the skills necessary to produce the highest quality virtual staging. We have employed some amazing graphic designers with some great skills however, even some of the best graphic designers are sometimes not a fit for our service. Due to the uniqueness of virtual staging there are some design factors that our design team must account for during production, and these factors are why software is incapable of rendering the same quality.
Design Factors
We’ve seen some people claiming to sell “virtual staging software” but really all they are selling is a generic collage making software and a few furniture images with only 1-2 different angles. As you can imagine this solution will create a lot of problems when you try insert furniture at the correct perspective, an image of a couch taken from the front will not work in many rooms unless you want the couch directly in the middle of the photo without any variation in perspective or have the slightest degree of an angle.
The major design factors our designers have to account for are perspective, ensuring that the furniture matches up with the perspective and vanishing points of the room. They also need to account for light sources and consider the differences between natural and artificial light and how it will cast onto the furniture in the room to create highlights.
The light sources also play a major role in determining shadows and shadows are one of the most important factors in creating a realistic effect. Most generic graphic design tools and collage software can not make shadows or if they can, they can only make simple drop shadows that makes the furniture look like it has a black glow around it. This type of software is also not capable of evaluating the lighting of a room which is why they will cause the finished product to look like a cartoon instead of being photo-realistic.
This is why we’ve created our virtual staging service, to take all of the complex, hard work out of virtual staging for you. Simply send us your photos and you’re done, for only $197 you can get started today.
These are just a few of the hundreds of factors that need to be addressed during virtual staging, we hope this article answers the questions you have about virtual staging software and also sheds a light on the thought process and hard work that goes into what our designers do to provide you with the highest quality of virtual staging.
Still have a question? Liked this article? Leave us a comment below…

This software is absolutely what I was looking for. I haven’t read all through your site, so my question may be redundent.
I would like to know where I can purchase this type or software, so I may learn to use it myself. Is it possible to learn quickly with this type of software or is it years of training? I look forward to hear from you
Cynthia
I am interested in Virtual Staging Software to offer my clients. I wonder if you are offering the Virtual Staging service or if you actually sell the software to small business owners. Also, do you offer training?
Thank You,
Michelle Dixon, ASP
Stage It Up
Hi Michelle & Cynthia,
You may have missed some things in this article, I suggest you read it again. The main point being that there is no “virtual staging” software. We use a wide variety of different software that takes years of training and a special database. None of which we are selling. Virtual staging is simply a service that we offer.
I hope that helps.
Best Regards,
Bryan