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Best Virtual Staging Software [2024 Review]

Published: 13/03/2023

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

An empty or poorly designed property can drive potential buyers away. Fortunately, virtual staging solutions provide a faster and easier way to declutter and redesign properties. I'm sharing the best virtual staging software with the right features to create stunning virtual imagery for real estate photographers and agents.

My Best Virtual Staging Software Reviews

Whether you prefer an all-inclusive platform or DIY system, real estate virtual staging apps should enable you to transform properties seamlessly. While the top-rated programs are Home Designer Architectural, Home Designer Suite, and Ultimate Home Design, they still have varying assets and weaknesses, and that's what I'm going to discover.

Chief Architect Home Designer Architectural

The Chief Architect Home Designer Architectural is a powerful virtual staging app for real estate photographers who prefer a DIY style of work for optimum creative freedom. It includes editing tools for home design, interior design, remodeling, and landscaping. Even if the tools have default effects, you can still customize them when painting walls or adding cabinets.

The point-and-click system lets you visualize projects before you render 3D models. If you want to avoid cartoonish-like rendering, there's also a blending tool that enables you to tone down the manipulation, giving you more realistic effects.

With thousands of realistic furniture, plants, lighting fixtures, appliances, and decors, you won't have to waste time styling properties during a shoot. Furthermore, the smart design objects allow you to create items from scratch, regardless of the style, shape, molding, or size.

As you create things, you can also see details about the materials, especially their possible cost. Aside from that, the Home Designer Architectural software has tools dedicated to the automatic generation of roofs, stairs, framing, and foundations. In this way, you can accurately scale floor plans even while remodeling.

Chief Architect Home Designer Suite

Another great virtual home staging software is the Chief Architect Home Designer Suite, which is suitable for creating building projects in 2D and 3D formats. With thousands of built-in templates and library items, the Home Designer Suite is an intuitive and easy-to-use software, even for beginners.

Similar to the Home Design Architectural software, the Home Designer Suite focuses on home designing, interior designing, remodeling, landscaping, and cost estimation. Aside from an extensive product catalog, you can download more designs and bonus items for free.

If your clients want more angles or perspectives to see interiors and items, you can shift to 3D views to know exactly how you can move forward with the project. What's more, you can also design in 2D and 3D at the same time.

Even when you photograph a bare floor, you can help clients transform a property by adding rooms, arranging walls, moving columns, and changing colors. You can also remove out-of-place objects in a shot then replace them with a brand new and more appropriate item.

Virtual Architect Ultimate Home Design with Landscaping and Decks 9.0

The Virtual Architect Ultimate Home Design with Landscaping and Decks 9.0 uses photorealistic 3D technology to create virtual walkthroughs. At a reasonable price, you can also do some designing, remodeling, and landscaping.

True to its name, this virtual staging app does an excellent job working on landscaping and decks. It boasts a plant encyclopedia that has over 7000 species along with light, water, and climate requirements. It's perfect for properties that need accurate measurements of the available space before placing patios, fences, and plants.

Even if you have no design experience, you can use the fairly robust set of sketching tools to draw, add, and remove items. With a click and drag of a mouse, you can check the different fabric, texture, material, and paint options before drawing new rooms and walls.

The Ultimate Home Design software even has a special wizard-driven interface that intuitively modifies your design. After that, you can customize your designs and styles when painting walls or adding window coverings.

Apply Design

Apply Design is a user-friendly DIY virtual staging tool that helps real estate agents and photographers win more listings and sell properties faster. You must drag and drop a photo taken from any device, then virtually stage it using the app's 3D editor.

Company logo for Apply Design with featured images of an empty room with yellow tiled flooring and white walls and a fully furnished bedroom

You can create realistic interior designs even for an empty space, letting you render jaw-dropping results that you think only professionals can achieve. For example, its intuitive editor enables you to select the best combination of furniture or plants in a living space as you see fit. 

It's beneficial for real estate agents or photographers who aren't savvy about interior design. Apply Design provides room bundles or collections of furniture, art, lighting, and other home furnishings that complement each other.

This DIY staging software for real estate can generate a realistic staged photo within 20 minutes, compared to others with a 72-hour turnover period for only four virtual stagings. If you're trying to save money, it offers professional staging services as low as $7 to $10 per image, although you have to use coins to upload.

Pros

  • Supports 2D and 360-degree images taken from any device.
  • Allows complete control and endless revisions.
  • It lets you stage virtually anywhere in real-time.

Cons

  • Lack of high-end furniture options.
  • It uses an Apply Coin system for uploading listing photos.

Apply Design

Real Tour Vision (RTV)

RTV or Real Tour Vision is another professional virtual staging software that can help you create web and mobile-friendly virtual tours. It's a one-stop-shop software for real estate professionals who want to handle their marketing publication materials and finances in a single platform.

It supports 360 panoramic augmented reality tours, 1080D HD videos, Matterport, and most 3D applications. RTV can also play back different types of visual digital media, including hosting 2D and 3D floor plans.

As a business owner, you can create orders, send invoices, collect payments, watermark photos, and develop social media videos. Your clients, especially real estate agents, can receive weekly traffic reports about the performance of a virtually staged image.

What sets RTV apart from the other virtual staging apps is that it charges only $15 per photo. While there's a one-time fee of $99 for the setup, it's worth the investment because you'll receive a private label, proper training, and unlimited lifetime technical support, ensuring you have the best real estate photography staging experience.

Pros

  • It lets you create marketing tools and virtual staging in one app.
  • Provides weekly tour reports and 100% private label.
  • Offers per full project and media-only packages for real estate listings.

Cons

  • It has a learning curve if you use the program without technical support.
  • Training videos can use some updating.

Factors to Consider for Virtual Staging Apps

Staging images helps real estate photographers create a rendition for viewers to have a virtual walkthrough. Before virtually staging a home, your chosen software must have the following features and functions.

Comparing Virtual Staging Softwares

SoftwaresProcessorDesign OptionsMemory (RAM)
Chief Architect 64-bit3D8GB
Chief Architect Suite 64-bit2D and 3D8GB
Architect Ultimate 64-bit3D6 GB
Apply Design 32-bit2D and 360-Degree images8GB
Real Tour Vision 64-bit2D and 3D8GB
Living room interior with white and blue accents

Intuitiveness

Using a different kind of software aside from Photoshop and Lightroom can be a bit overwhelming for some real estate photographers, especially if this is your first time using a visual staging program.

Home Designer Architectural, Home Designer Suite, Ultimate Home Design, Apply Design, and RTV have built-in commands and functions you can utilize to create virtual imagery. While most of the work still feels like a do-it-yourself system, this gives you greater control over the design.

Design Options

The actual design may depend on the preferences of clients. However, the more design options software has, the more you can follow your client's requests.

Your chosen software must have most of these standard virtual renovation features.

  • Virtual Staging: This is the main feature of Home Designer Architectural, Home Designer Suite, and Ultimate Home Design as they all allow photographers to fill a room with elements according to different lifestyles.
  • Product Remodeling: If your client wants to highlight lifestyle items in a property, you can also create models of furniture or decor, then add materials and textures to bring products to life. All of the three programs can do product remodeling.
  • Customization: Although customization is more time-consuming, the ability to sketch and paint according to actual specifications or dimensions makes your furnishings more realistic.
  • 360-Degree Virtual Reality Tours: Suppose a client suddenly asks for a 360-degree tour even after the shoot, or you don't have a 360-degree camera. The good thing is that you can compile photos on RTV, Home Designer Architectural, and Home Designer Suite to create 360-degree virtual on-site tours.
  • Design Catalog: Using a virtual staging app can have a bit of a learning curve, especially if your work mainly focuses on taking real estate photos. All of the programs contain a helpful design catalog filled with free tools, designs, and customizable items.
  • Item Removal: This is among the essential functions of the three virtual staging programs, as you most likely would need to remove some elements in a scene to show what a property looks like. Some clients still prefer a plain, clean perspective for them to have more room for imagination.
  • Floor Plans: While there are specific applications used for developing floor plans, Apply Design, RTV, Home Designer Architectural, Home Designer Suite, and Virtual Architect Ultimate Home Design let you create floor plans in 2D and 3D.
  • Architectural Rendering for New Homes: If clients need help envisioning architectural blueprints, programs like Home Designer Architectural and Home Designer Suite enable you to render blueprints for a realistic 3D perspective.
Bedroom with white upholstered bed

Image Quality

Even if you're doing virtual staging, it's important that your designs look authentic. In the age where people know that you can create visuals digitally, unrealistic outputs can only harm the sales process.

It's crucial that the program's features enable you to create realistic designs that make it appear as if you truly used actual furniture or materials in the photo.

Turnaround Time

While most virtual staging applications can help you quickly create designs, the standard turnover time of most virtual staging applications is 1-2 days. Apply Design has the fastest turnaround time of around 20 minutes, whereas RTV follows at 24 hours.

With user-friendly features, Home Designer Architectural, Home Designer Suite, and Ultimate Home Design can help you finish your work in 48 hours or less.

Cost

The upfront cost can be expensive if this is your first time using virtual staging apps or you don't have the market for it yet. Even if there are premium ones, there are budget-friendly options as well.

It's vital that you consider the cost of using a particular software because it can influence your future photography pricing packages.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I Do Virtual Staging in Photoshop?

Yes, although photoshop is mainly used in photo editing, you also can use it to do virtual staging. However, it is not the most efficient solution as it might take a much longer time or result in low-quality and unrealistic results.

Which Is Better, Between Real Staging and Virtual Staging?

Virtual staging is better than real staging because it allows you to design an image using the staging software in a way that sells faster compared to when you are using real staging. Virtual staging is also cost-efficient.

Can You Do Virtual Staging Using a Phone?

Yes, you can do virtual staging using a smartphone through applications such as Homestyler, which is usually phone and PC-compatible. The app has excellent results as it features real 3D designs, such as customizing your own rooms. Additionally, the app is free, and you can download it on your smartphone from the app store.

Conclusion

Knowing how to do virtual staging increases your value as a real estate photographer. There are clients who don't want to travel to properties and would just rely on looking at photos online. With the best virtual staging app, you can transform listings into the dream property of potential buyers.

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