Staging a home office

Why this room punches above its size

Home working has made the question "is there somewhere to work" a genuine filter for a large share of buyers, and it is a question that empty photographs answer badly. A 6 m² room with nothing in it looks like a failure; the same room with a desk under the window and a shelf on the wall looks like the reason to choose this house over the one down the road.

It is also cheap to get right, because a desk is a small object. Where a bedroom render has to fit a bed, an office render has to fit a 120 cm desk and a chair, and almost every box room in the country does.

What actually fits in a box room

Under about 7 m² — which covers most third bedrooms in post-war stock — the realistic set is a desk against the window wall, an ergonomic chair, and either a narrow bookshelf or a couple of floating shelves. That is it. A rug, a credenza and an armchair belong in a 10 m² study, and asking for them in a box room is how you end up with a render that quietly widened the room.

If the room has a stair bulkhead or a shallow built-in cupboard, the desk works around it. Those features stay: a bulkhead is not something staging may flatten.

• Bedrooms →

Be careful what the photo implies

Staging a room as a study is a suggestion about use, and that is fine. It becomes a problem when the suggested use conflicts with what the room legally is or what the particulars say. A room marketed as a third bedroom that is staged as an office is normal and unremarkable; a room that cannot lawfully be a habitable room being staged as a workspace is not.

The rest of the usual rules apply without change. The window, the radiator, the door, the floor and the view are the property. Only the desk, the chair, the shelving and a little decor are ours to add.

• The rules that apply to listing photos →
• Children's rooms →

Home office questions

Should I stage the box room as a study or as a bedroom?

Whichever is the more honest reading of the room, and ideally the one matching the particulars. If the room genuinely takes a single bed, staging it as a bedroom supports the room count. If it does not, staging it as a study is the more useful and more defensible photo.

Can it add built-in shelving or a fitted desk?

No — built-in joinery is architecture. Free-standing shelving and a free-standing desk are fine, and that is what gets added.

Will it show a window with a better view?

No. The view through any window is reproduced exactly as photographed. That is one of the specific things to check when you compare the render against your original.

Is a staged office photo worth a paid render?

In a two-or-three-bed house with a small third room, it is often the best photo in the set. If you only stage two rooms in a listing, the reception room and this one are usually the right two.