Guide · Virtual staging
Which rooms should you virtually stage?
Short answer: start with the living room, then the primary bedroom, then the dining area or kitchen. In the National Association of REALTORS® 2025 Profile of Home Staging, buyers' agents named the living room (37%), the primary bedroom (34%) and the kitchen (23%) as the most important rooms to stage; the guest bedroom came last (7%). If you only stage a few photos, spend them there.
What the 2025 NAR survey says
Most important to stage (buyers' agents)
| Living room | 37% |
| Primary bedroom | 34% |
| Kitchen | 23% |
| Guest bedroom | 7% |
Rooms they stage (sellers' agents)
| Living room | 91% |
| Primary bedroom | 83% |
| Dining room | 69% |
| Kitchen | 68% |
| Guest bedroom / children's bedroom | 22% each |
The survey went to Realtors in February 2025 (1,266 usable responses). It covers staging in general, physical or virtual. The same report shows why the photos deserve the effort: photos were the listing-marketing element agents most often called important — 88% of sellers' agents and 73% of buyers' agents.
A plan for one to six photos
Our recommendation, built on the ranking above — add rooms in this order as your budget allows:
| Photos | Rooms | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 photo | Living room | Ranked most important by buyers' agents, and usually the lead photo of the listing. |
| 2 photos | + Primary bedroom | A close second (34%) — the room buyers imagine themselves in. |
| 3–4 photos | + Dining area, + kitchen if it has space for a table or stools | Sellers' agents stage the dining room (69%) and kitchen (68%) almost as often as the bedroom. A kitchen full of cabinets needs little more than stools and decor. |
| 5–6 photos | + A second bedroom as a home office, + the patio | An empty spare room reads as "what is this for?"; a desk answers it. An outdoor seating area shows the space can be used. |
Rooms to skip, or to handle differently
- Guest and children's bedrooms. Only 7% of buyers' agents ranked the guest bedroom as the most important room. Stage it last, or as a home office, which tells buyers what the extra room is good for.
- Bathrooms. There is little furniture to add; clean, bright photos do more than a staged towel.
- Rooms that aren't empty. Virtual staging adds furniture to empty rooms. Leftover furniture and clutter have to be removed first — in the room or in the photo — or the staging will look wrong.
- Dark or tilted photos. Reshoot them before paying for staging — see 10 tips for room photos that stage well.
Keep the listing consistent
- Use one style for the whole listing, so the rooms look like one home rather than a catalog.
- Put the staged living room first in the photo order — it is the room buyers' agents rank highest.
- Disclose the staging. Most MLSs require it, and in California AB 723 also requires access to the original photo — see the AB 723 checklist.
- Budget per photo, not per listing: see what virtual staging costs in 2026.
Staging several rooms with ORVIONIS
ORVIONIS Virtual Staging takes up to ten room photos per order: $15 per photo, $12 each from five photos, $99 for ten. You set the room type of each photo (living room, bedroom, dining room, home office, kitchen, patio), pick one of six styles for the whole order, and get two staged versions of every photo in about two minutes per photo — walls, floors and windows stay as photographed. Every order includes labeled copies for the MLS disclosure, and your first photo is free.
Sources
- National Association of REALTORS®, “NAR Report Reveals Home Staging Boosts Sale Prices and Reduces Time on Market” (May 6, 2025) — room rankings, marketing elements, survey method: nar.realtor
- NAR, Profile of Home Staging (research report page): nar.realtor