How to Choose the Best Home Staging Certification Course
It can be tough choosing the best home staging certification, which is why we’ve spent hours researching for you.
- Editorial Staff
- May 22, 2025
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You’ve decided you want to get your home staging certification. Great! But what is the best home staging certification course?
Many small businesses fail. One way to ensure that you will be one of the survivors is to enroll in the best home staging certification course.
But how do you decide which is “the best”?
Every week, people email the Home Staging Institute wondering how to choose a home staging course, and we don’t blame them!
It can be incredibly confusing to choose from the wide range of home staging courses available these days, and you want to make sure you are getting the most bang for your buck.
Well, there will be at least two or three key things that matter to you when deciding which home staging course is best….
- The first is how well the course teaches good design principles and practices for doing the actual staging.
- The second is how in-depth the course goes into topics related to running a home staging business.
- The third is the kind of home staging certification or qualification you get once you complete the course.
You will need to think about just how much of each of those you need.
If you have prior experience with running a small business or working at a small business, you may need less information in regards to starting a home staging business.
The staging piece may matter less to you if you have a strong design background.
Or maybe you are already a successful home stager or have business and design knowledge, and you just need the certification to win more home staging customers. In this case, you’re not actually too worried about the course material.
One of our students, Sarah from Colorado, had spent five years working in interior design before discovering home staging. She flew through the hands-on units of her course but found huge value in the business-focused units. She later told us it was the lessons on pricing and working with realtors that helped her land her first four clients within six weeks of getting certified. If you know your strengths, you’ll know where the course needs to do the heavy lifting.
So, think about what you are hoping to achieve before reading any further.
Sit down and ask yourself a few questions about where you are now and where you hope to go with this small business idea.
Then, based on that, develop a list of questions concerning the coursework you would like to pursue.
Now, let’s look at some other high-level considerations you need to think about when choosing a home staging course…
Other Home Staging Courses
- Affordable courses that range from $197 to $498
- Courses range from $899 to $5,000+
- Lifetime access to the course and all future updates
- 6–12 months access, then must renew (and pay again)
- Email support for life – ask questions anytime, even years later
- Support ends when access ends, or requires extra payment
- We’re lifetime partners in your home staging journey – not just a temporary resource
- A customer for 6 - 12 months, then access is revoked
- 90-day money-back guarantee – no fine print, no pressure
- 72 hours to 30 day refund windows, sometimes with hidden conditions
- Covers all major staging types: occupied staging, vacant staging, and consultations
- Often focuses on just one type – leaving gaps in your training
- Stood the test of time since 2007 - thousands of students trained worldwide, with proven results
- Many are new or unproven - launched recently with limited success stories
- Step-by-step business training included (pricing, branding, setup, taxes, more)
- Business setup either skipped or sold as an additional course
- Full marketing & digital marketing training (social media, portfolio building, ads)
- In depth marketing is either skipped or sold as an additional course
- Includes home staging contract, invoice, and proposal templates
- You’ll have to create these yourself or buy them separately
- Access to wholesale vendor directories to buy staging items affordably
- Most don’t include supplier lists, or you are asked to buy them separately
- Teaches curb appeal strategies to maximize exterior impact
- Rarely includes exterior staging tips or landscaping advice
- Created by professional home stagers who have staged hundreds of homes
- Often created by general educators with no staging experience
- Trusted worldwide – with students in the US, UK, Canada, NZ, Australia, and more
- Often local-only and not globally recognized
But First, Hear Why our Customers Tell Us We Offer the Best Home Staging Certification Course
really glad I chose to get certified through you
.
I'm so grateful to have been guided to the Home Staging Institute
.
I have been super successful and put each and everything I learned in the course content to use
. Thank you!
so very happy I chose yours
. There is a sincere quality with yours in truly desiring a person to succeed. I'm enjoying every minute of it! I will recommend your course to friends
. Thanks again for the great course.
I am so excited
, you have no idea! Thank you so much for this course, it is great.
* These are real testimonials from recent Home Staging Institute customers. Where a profile photo wasn’t supplied with the testimonial, we have opted to use a placeholder.
Choosing the Best Home Staging Certification Course
Ask Yourself: How Accessible Is The Home Staging Course?
Where is the course and how do I access it? Does it fit conveniently into my life and schedule or will it be an onerous burden to try to attend? Is it in a format with which I am comfortable, such as written versus narrated presentations?
Pros & Cons of local home staging certification courses:
If you attend a local home staging course you’ll have much better hands-on experience. You’ll be able to interact directly with your tutor, ask questions, and get immediate feedback. You’ll also be able to network with others in your area who are interested in becoming a professional home stager. Your tutors will have local knowledge and will be in a good position to advise on local rates and practices.
The main downside of local courses is that they are tough to find, and you might need to live in a large city such as New York, Los Angeles, London, or Sydney to be able to find a good quality local home staging course.
They will also cost more, and you will need to work around the course schedule which may mean taking annual leave at your day job if you are currently employed full time.
Some local home staging courses, such as The Academy of Home Staging, offer in-person courses on both the east coast and west coast.
If you are looking for a home staging course near you, however, it’s probably best to hit Google and see what you can find.
If you live outside of big cities such as New York, Sydney, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, you might struggle to find a local in-person course.
That’s exactly what happened to one of our students, Emily from Boise, Idaho. She looked into a few in-person options in Seattle and Salt Lake City but quickly realized the travel alone would eat up too much time and money. Instead, she enrolled in our online certification at the Home Staging Institute and completed the course in just five weeks – all while managing school drop-offs and freelancing on the side. Today, Emily runs a successful staging business in her local market and frequently credits the flexibility of an online course as what made her career shift possible.
This is why taking home staging courses online is becoming increasingly popular…which is exactly what we focus on here at the Home Staging Institute.
Pros of in-person home staging courses
- Hands-on experience
- Instant feedback
- More socializing
- Great focus on local market
Cons of in-person home staging courses
- Typically more expensive
- Can be tough to find outside of large cities
- Trickier to schedule amongst your other jobs
- A commute is required
Pros & Cons of online home staging certification courses:
With online home staging certification, you are not as constrained by geography as you once were.
If you can’t find a course locally to attend in person, you can find a course online.
Even if you can find a local home staging course, perhaps you want to skip the commute and work on your own schedule, in which case online home staging courses are a better option.
The main benefit of an online home staging course is that they generally have a very flexible schedule.
Here at the Home Staging Institute, some students complete the home staging certification and exam within two weeks. They obviously have a lot of free time and dedicate every moment to reading, learning, and passing the exam. Other students however choose to take a bit longer and choose to log into the online course once a week for just an hour at a time. With local home staging courses, this flexibility is simply impossible.
One of our students, Jason from Phoenix, was managing a full-time role in retail while preparing to transition into staging. He carved out time three evenings a week to chip away at the online course. Within two months, he had his certification in hand and landed his first paid staging project through a referral from a local realtor. The flexibility of learning at his own pace made all the difference. If your schedule is tight, we always suggest starting small – just two sessions per week is often enough to build steady momentum.
This can be extremely important if you are still working at a paid job while trying to launch a business.
Pros of an online course
- Can take the course that best suits what you want to learn, regardless of where it is located
- Typically more affordable
- Learn at your own pace, when you want
- Extremely flexible
- From the comfort of your own home
- Can practice with furniture and accessories you are familiar with
Cons of an online course
- Not as social
- Small delay in instructor feedback
Ask Yourself: Does The Instructor Really Know Their Stuff?
The best home staging course instructors will have real-world experience themselves.
You want someone whose information is current and based on real client interactions and home staging projects. It’s not just about knowing what throw pillows to choose – it’s about how to quote a job, how to deal with clients who change their minds daily, and how to work with realtors who need the job done yesterday.
A good instructor also needs to know how to teach. They need to take the practical knowledge they’ve learned on the job and turn it into lessons that are easy to follow and apply.
With online home staging courses, you’ll typically find that the course creators are 100% focused on home staging, often dedicating years to the craft. This focus shows in the quality of the content and the relevance of the lessons.
The Home Staging Institute’s courses were written by professional home stagers who’ve “been there, done that.”
The Institute was originally set up in 2007 when founder Jackie Riley, a successful home stager herself and author of Home Staging Business Success kept getting asked for tips and training. She saw a gap in the market and created a practical, accessible online course that’s now helped thousands of students build careers in the staging industry.
Since 2007, we’ve tapped into the knowledge and experience of dozens of other home stagers who have contributed content and updates to our course, which is why we firmly believe that we offer the best home staging certification (In fact, we’ve bought all the other alternative courses, and that helps us ensure we are always two steps ahead!)
Today, the Home Staging Institute has students across the United States, Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and France.
Over the years, we’ve been featured on Trulia, TheStreet, Redfin, and many other top real estate and design blogs. The home staging statistics we curate annually are the most cited and quoted statistics across social media, home stagers’ websites, and the media.
From what our team has seen, the strongest-performing students follow instructors with a clear, singular focus on home staging – not those who try to pull design tips from unrelated disciplines. We also routinely hear from students who say the clarity of instruction and the specific industry examples in our course gave them the confidence to take on real clients within weeks.
Other Home Staging Courses
- Written by professional home stagers with real client experience
- Often created by generalists who also teach unrelated design topics
- Trusted since 2007 with students in 49+ countries
- Often new or unproven - no long track record in the industry
- Course content updated monthly based on real industry trends
- Rarely updated or adapted to today’s staging market
- Featured on Redfin, Trulia, TheStreet, and dozens of real estate blogs
- Rarely updated or adapted to Lack third-party media recognition or credibility’s staging market
Ask Yourself: What Are Your Future Plans For The Business?
Do you know if staging alone will support your financial goals? Or will you eventually need to branch out into related services like interior styling, seasonal décor consulting, or even real estate photography?
Do you want to know how to start a home staging business from the ground up?
It’s also important to be honest with yourself about the type of business you want. If you’re looking for a solo operation that gives you flexibility around school pickups or other responsibilities, a “lifestyle business” model could be ideal.
On the other hand, if you’re hoping to eventually hire a team, buy a warehouse full of inventory, and dominate your local market, you’ll want to make sure your training course addresses those larger ambitions too.
Is the course you’re considering compatible with your long-term vision? Does it focus only on the basics of staging, or does it dive into the business-side topics you’ll need to scale or expand?
These might seem like future problems, but they directly influence the type of course you need today. If you’re focused on staging technique alone, that’s great – but if you need to learn lead generation, contracts, quoting, invoicing, and managing subcontractors, make sure your course covers those too.
One thing we’ve consistently noticed is that students who enroll with a clear vision for their future business – whether that’s staying solo or building a full-scale team – tend to move faster and make decisions more confidently. That’s why we include exercises in our course to help you map out your goals from day one. The clearer your path, the more value you’ll get from the course content.
You might even discover that the perfect home staging course doesn’t exist. And that’s okay. In that case, find the course that gets you 80% of the way there, and use books, blogs, and bonus materials to fill in the gaps.
Other Home Staging Courses
- Supports both solo stagers and those building full-scale businesses
- Focus narrowly on staging techniques, not business growth
- Includes training on quoting, invoicing, contracts, and scaling
- Lack training on the admin, legal, or financial side of staging
Ask Yourself: What Kind Of Support Does The Course Offer?
We offer lifetime access to all our courses and materials, and our instructors are available 7 days a week to answer your questions – whether you’re on your first staging project or your fiftieth.
You can email us any time for advice, guidance, or help pricing a job, and we’ll aim to respond within 24 hours.
This is something that truly sets us apart from many other home staging certification providers.
Most other programs will give you access for 6 or 12 months and then require an annual renewal fee just to continue receiving support and access to the learning materials. That’s not how we do things.
We believe in being lifetime partners in your home staging journey – not just a temporary resource.
Support is more than just tech help or course navigation. It’s about knowing you have a knowledgeable professional you can reach out to when you’re stuck on a project, need help crafting a proposal, or simply want a second opinion on staging choices.
Some courses may help you connect with vendors, offer affiliate opportunities, or provide access to private networking groups where you can meet other stagers. Others may offer occasional live Q&As or bonus material drops.
Deciding which support features matter most will come down to your personality and your current situation. If you’re confident in the hands-on stuff but need help with business setup and marketing, make sure the support offered covers those areas too.
But here’s something we’ve learned over the years: students often don’t know what kind of help they’ll need until they’re deep in a project. That’s why having lifetime access and ongoing instructor support becomes so valuable. You may not use it every week, but when you need it, you’ll be glad it’s there.
Choose a home staging course that won’t just teach you—but that will also stick by your side while you build your career.
Other Home Staging Courses
- Lifetime access to the course and all future updates
- 6–12 months access, then must renew (and pay again)
- Instructors available to message 7 days a week for real project support
- Limited instructor availability
- No renewal fees - ever
- Support ends when your access expires
Ask Yourself: Will the Course Provide Home Staging Certification?
Facts about Home Staging Institute: You’ll earn your home staging certification after taking our Professional, Advanced, or Realtor home staging courses. To earn your home staging certification with us you simply need to complete a quick and easy online exam. You can do this in your own time, whenever suits you best.
Home staging courses are still fairly unregulated. Unlike, say, medicine, you aren’t likely to kill someone with it, so it hasn’t yet caught the attention of authorities looking to regulate everything under the sun.
You can check your state laws, but the odds are good you can pretty much do what you want here and do not legally require any particular education or certification. So, strictly speaking, you probably don’t need home staging certification to start a home staging business.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t want to get a certification.
It’s one of the ways to help show prospective customers that you are a serious business that they can trust.
Anytime money is at stake, trust matters. Building trust is always a challenge and this is especially true for any new business.
Finding ways to signal that you have done your due diligence and are adequately prepared to serve their needs can play a critical role in getting things off the ground. While simply being able to say “I took x, y, and z training courses” can have value, certification provides an extra layer of assurance that someone feels you passed muster and are good enough.
Other Home Staging Courses
- Earn your certification by passing a flexible online exam - on your schedule
- Often no exam or certification included
Ask Yourself: Do You Get Ongoing Access To The Materials?
Facts about Home Staging Institute: We’ve been shocked to hear that some home staging courses block you out of the content after one year, and you have to pay annual fees to be able to access it. With the Home Staging Institute, you get lifetime access to our home staging courses, resources, forms, and bonuses. There are no ongoing fees at all.
Obviously, you will have access to course materials while you are taking the course. But try to find out if you get to keep copies of everything or have ongoing access to digital copies after the course is over.
Traditionally, college students purchased their books. While they could sell them back at the end of the semester, many students kept their textbooks and continued to reference them well after the class was over.
In the digital age, it’s no longer assured that your materials will be made available in a similarly permanent format. Make sure you know ahead of time whether or not you can continue to access the materials for reference purposes.
If it is a local course in a physical classroom, you want hard copy handouts of slideshows and similar presentations. If it is an online course, you want options like being able to download PDFs or having continued access to password-protected online copies.
Other Home Staging Courses
- Lifetime access to all course materials, templates, contracts, and future updates
- Lose access after 6-12 months unless you pay renewal fees
- No renewal fees - one-time payment means forever access
- Must repurchase the course to refresh or re-study
- Reference the content anytime, even years after certification
- No downloadable copies - locked behind expiring logins
Ask Yourself: Does It Fit The Budget And Time Constraints?
Facts about Home Staging Institute: We feel we provide both the best home staging certification course, matched with the best value for money too. We love home staging and don’t want to make our home staging courses too expensive, and that’s why we’ve kept the prices low for over 13 years now.
If you are starting a business, you need to be meeting both deadlines and milestones. The course needs to be completed in a reasonable period of time and fit within the budget you have penciled out for launching your new business.
Of course, you don’t want to go too cheap. After all, “you get what you pay for.” You may also find most decent courses cost a similar amount.
But look over start dates, end dates, and so forth. Check that against your overall schedule and planned launch date and see if it makes sense for you.
Starting a new business can be both exciting and nerve-wracking. Taking a home staging course can help you be better prepared and feel calmer so that you are usually more excited rather than stressed out.
It can help make sure you get things off to a good start. This can be the difference between a failed venture and a thriving one. Knowing that you are being given an edge and putting down a foundation to help you succeed can help you forge ahead with confidence.
So, as they say, choose wisely.
Ask Yourself: Does the home staging certification course offer a guarantee?
Facts about Home Staging Institute: Our home staging training comes with the best guarantee in the industry – a 100% money-back guarantee within 90 days. If you feel you picked the wrong course, or something happens in your life which means you’ve changed your mind, just tell us and we will process the refund. Stress-free. In fact, you don’t even need to give us a reason.
Since you’ve read this far down the page, you’ll understand that there is a lot to consider when choosing the best home staging course to suit your needs. For this reason, we always recommend choosing a course that has a 100% money-back guarantee. The Home Staging Institute offers this for all students if the course isn’t what they expected, so you are safe with us. If you decide to go elsewhere if you find a different course that suits your needs better, be sure to check they offer a money-back guarantee as well.
Other Home Staging Courses
- 90-day money-back guarantee – no fine print, no pressure
- 72 hours to 30 day refund windows, sometimes with hidden conditions
Summary
Choosing the best home staging certification for you can be a bit stressful. We understand that. That’s why we’ve written this guide, and offer our money-back guarantee. Regardless of what home staging certification course you choose, we wish you all the best with your future home staging career. We are always here if you have any questions!
Decide what you want to learn, then find the course that best matches these requirements. We are obviously biased towards online home staging courses since we have been offering them for over 10 years now and see how well they suit our student’s lifestyle, but if you need that hands-on social interaction, a local home staging course might be best for you.
Once you’ve decided which course is best for you, check their guarantees, and whether they offer some sort of certification badge or certificate to add to your website and marketing materials.
Ticking these boxes will ensure you get bang for your buck and are happy with the course you choose.
One last thing: Don’t assume that more expensive courses are better! We offer one of the cheapest home staging courses on the market, and perhaps the cheapest home staging certification available. Whether you spend a few hundred dollars with a company like The Home Staging Institute, or a few thousand dollars with other certification providers, the main thing is to answer the above questions so you are getting the best course for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
I always like to finish up some frequently asked questions, so here are our top home staging certification questions:
What is the best home staging certification?
I’m biased, and will of course recommend the Home Staging Institute. You need to decide for yourself which is the best home staging certification based on what you want to get out of the course. If you are unsure what I am talking about, re-read our guide above.
How do I get a home staging certification?
There are two ways how to get a home staging certification: local courses, or online. Local courses let you meet and mingle with other students, but online courses let you study in your own time without a strict schedule. Online home staging courses are also cheaper.
Is there specific home staging certification for realtors?
The Institute doesn’t provide specific home staging certification for realtors, but we do tailor a course for realtors which results in the same certification as our other home staging courses. The realtor course is just a little more thorough and in-depth.
Should I simply find a course that provides home staging certification near me?
My recommendation is not to simply look for a local home staging course, consider online courses too. You should find the course that best suits your needs, rather than where the course is located.
What does home staging certification cost?
With the Home Staging Institute, home staging certification costs $247 as a one-off payment or three payments of just $86. As at the time of writing, other courses costs are:
- QC Design School: $1604 when paid in full
- Homestagingresources.com: $999 when paid in full
- View reviews of other home staging courses on this handy website.
Is a cheap home staging certification course good?
Yes, we do offer a very cheap home staging certification course, but that doesn’t mean it is low quality or not reputable. We at The Home Staging Institute spent a lot of time and money preparing the courses back in 2007 when we were one of the first home staging training providers on the internet, and since then we have had thousands of graduates through our training. For this reason, we don’t need to charge a lot as much of our investment in creating the courses is already paid for. The reason we can offer cheap home staging certification is that we are an online provider, our systems are automated, and the fee is primarily to cover the cost of the exam and our instructor’s time in marking your work and preparing the certificate.
I’ve looked everywhere and can’t free online home staging certification. Does it exist?
No, there is no free online home staging certification.
What is the difference between all the home staging certification programs?
At the end of the day, home staging is home staging. And because of this, all the courses cover pretty much the same key topics. Over the years our team has taken many of the other home staging certification programs to see what they offer, and to help improve our own courses, and have found a few little differences.
- The more expensive courses are more advanced technologically. Their websites are obviously higher-end and would cost tens of thousands or more to develop. Here at the Home Staging Institute, we give our website a polish every year or so, but we focus heavily on the course material rather than being high-tech.
- Different courses vary in their examples and imagery based on their geographic region. Home stagers in Utah are styling houses different from those in New York, who again are styling homes different from those in London or Sydney. Although we recommend taking an online home staging class, it is probably a good idea to take one that was created for people in your country. Note that we at the Home Staging Institute have students from all over the world, but primarily cater to people in the United States.
Are there any home staging school requirements or pre-requisites?
No, there are no requirements before taking a course on home staging. We have students in high school, through to Ph.D. graduates, to retirees who want to create an additional income.
How do you choose a home staging course?
Choosing a home staging course really comes down to just a few key questions.
- Do you want an online home staging course or an in-person course?
- How much are you willing to pay?
- Which is the most credible home staging course that fits these criteria?
Our (obviously biased) view is that our Professional Course is the best home staging certification course available, and provides the best value for money. It’s an online course, meaning you can do it from the comfort of your own home, using your own furniture and accessories. It’s also one of the cheapest home staging courses available. Since the Home Staging Institute was founded in 2007, we’ve seen the industry grow over time and have perfected our course and certification over nearly 15 years.
Ready to Take Your Home Staging Skills to the Next Level?
At the Home Staging Institute, we specialize in helping people turn their love of decorating into a rewarding career. If you enjoyed learning about the topic in this blog post, you’ll love what’s inside our Home Staging Certification Courses. They’re 100% online, self-paced, and packed with practical tools, templates, and real-world advice to help you succeed.
Join thousands of students from around the world who’ve trusted us to help them become certified home stagers.
