Journal
How much does home staging cost in Melbourne, honestly.
For vendors
2 June 2026
8 minutes of reading
The short answer
Most home staging in Melbourne costs between two and six thousand dollars for a standard campaign, with larger homes and longer campaigns running higher. That is the honest range, and the reason it is a range rather than a single number is that staging is quoted to the home, not sold off a shelf.
A small apartment with two rooms to dress sits at the lower end. A four-bedroom house furnished across living, dining, kitchen, and bedrooms for a six-week campaign sits well above it. Two homes on the same street can be quoted differently, because the work is different.
Below is what that money actually covers, what moves the figure up or down, and how to get an accurate number for your own home without guessing.
What you are paying for
A staging quote is not a furniture rental bill with a margin added on top. It covers the pieces themselves, yes, but also the design decision behind every one of them, the labour of getting them into the house and out again, the transport, and the weeks the furniture lives in the home during the campaign.
The furniture is the visible part. The part you are really buying is the judgement: which sofa suits the proportions of the room, which palette flatters the light, what to leave out so the space reads as larger than it is. A room can be filled cheaply or styled well, and buyers can tell the difference even when they cannot name it.
Install and de-install are their own line. A house staged in a day takes a crew, a truck, and careful sequencing. When the property sells, all of it comes out again, which is a second day of the same work in reverse.
What moves the number
Size is the obvious one. More rooms means more furniture, more design time, and a longer install. A two-bedroom apartment and a five-bedroom house are not close on cost, and no honest quote pretends otherwise.
Whether the home is empty or lived in changes the brief. An empty home needs everything. An occupied home that already presents well may need only a light styling pass on shoot day, which is a smaller and cheaper piece of work.
Campaign length matters. Most homes are staged for an initial six-week campaign. If the sale runs long and the furniture stays in place, the hire extends with it.
Access has a cost, particularly for apartments. A seventh-floor unit with one small lift takes longer to install than a ground-floor house with a driveway, and the quote reflects the hours the install actually takes.
Does it pay for itself
This is the question underneath the price, and the honest answer is that a well-presented home is easier to fall in love with, and a home that is easy to fall in love with tends to sell more easily. We do not publish figures claiming a fixed return, because a sale has too many moving parts to credit one of them cleanly. Staging is one of the few campaign costs that changes how the home is perceived, rather than how widely it is advertised.
A two-bedroom apartment furnished for a six-week campaign. Scale of the pieces, not quantity, does the work.
Why we quote rather than print a price list
We do not publish a fixed price list, and that is a deliberate choice rather than a coy one. A printed set of tiers would either overcharge the simple homes or undercharge the involved ones, and we would rather quote the home in front of us.
A quote follows a short look at the property. The number of bedrooms, whether it is empty, the access, the timeline, and a few photos are usually enough for us to put a real figure in writing. We reply to every quote request within 24 hours, and the figure we send is the figure, not a starting point that climbs later.
“A room can be filled cheaply or styled well. Buyers can tell the difference, even when they cannot name it.”
— The Dekore studio
Getting an accurate number for your home
If you want a real figure rather than a range, the fastest way is to send us the property. The suburb, the number of bedrooms, whether anyone is still living there, your rough timeline, and a handful of photos give us enough to quote properly.
We will come back within 24 hours with a written quote tailored to the home, the style set we would suggest, and the scope it covers. No pressure follows it. If the timing is not right, the quote keeps.
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