Pos­si­bly the most sur­pris­ing one of Lori’s stag­ing tips is that the smooth, neu­tral look we’ve seen in stag­ing and open hous­es for over a decade is mak­ing its way out. Cool grays are see­ing less pop­u­lar­i­ty while warmer tones are “in,” and black state­ment pieces are mak­ing a come­back.

Lori says, “Grays have been in for ten or fif­teen years it seems, and peo­ple are def­i­nite­ly now grav­i­tat­ing towards warmer tones. Real­ly nice beiges are com­ing back — def­i­nite­ly not the caramels and the tans that were even before the grays — so def­i­nite­ly no yel­low-toned beiges, but nice sooth­ing and warm beiges.”

Anoth­er secret weapon to add to your arse­nal of lux­u­ry stag­ing tips? Use black to draw the buyer’s eye to the best fea­tures of the home.

“Stag­ing in the last few years has been very neu­tral — noth­ing very jar­ring or shock­ing — just very smooth. But we’re see­ing a resur­gence back to black. Black is show­ing a strong place in stag­ing. When every­thing is neu­tral and smooth, your eye has nowhere to rest.”

“But if we ground things with black pieces, like art that has a black frame, or a beau­ti­ful black mar­ble island in a kitchen, those are things that real­ly draw your eye. So if we can posi­tion some black ele­ments in the space, we can lit­er­al­ly draw the buyer’s eye out to the sell­ing fea­ture.”

On that note, Lori also men­tions that in the lux­u­ry mar­ket, it’s okay to take some risks. Lux­u­ry buy­ers are typ­i­cal­ly look­ing for some­thing a bit more notable and mem­o­rable, so stag­ing has a bit more cre­ative lee­way here than in the tra­di­tion­al mar­ket.