Practical Learning

Comprehensive and Professional Training

The ISRP® double-certification course is unlike any other home staging training program. It offers you the convenience of studying on your own time and at your own pace, while providing you with a professional, comprehensive, and practical learning experience.

Your in-depth course lesson books and instructional movies on DVD give you all the information you need about home staging and interior redesign. Redesign is the foundation of home staging. In order to most effectively serve your clients, you'll need to know how stage their homes by primarily using their existing belongings. Rather than giving you tricks and tips, we'll teach you how to assess rooms and their contents from a redesign perspective and make the most effective staging decisions. Your redesign training also gives you another valuable service you can offer to your clients. You'll be more marketable and be able to take on more contracts with this unique double certification.

The program includes a comprehensive business series. You'll learn how to set up your business, market your services, and work with clients and real estate agents. We'll show you how to set your rates, prepare contracts and invoices, and conduct in-home consultations. The course includes a collection of sample templates and forms that you can customize and use in your professional work. We'll show you how the home staging process works, what you're responsible for, and how to work with contractors and other professionals. All your questions about starting and running a home staging business will be answered and you'll gain the confidence you need to succeed.

Our home staging program includes a whole series of practical, hands-on exercises. These assignments are designed to help you develop your professional skills and to prepare you for the work you'll be doing when you start your professional career.

With each lesson topic, you'll be asked to complete one or two exercises. The goal of these assignments is to immediately reinforce the concepts you learned and to help you develop your professional skills. Some of the assignments you'll be asked to complete include

• Evaluating the contents of a room and identifying the items that need to be removed for staging
• Mixing paint colors to show your understanding of color theory
• Analyzing and manipulating floorplans to show your space planning skills
• Measuring a room in your home and creating a scale floorplan
• Working with furniture, window treatments, lighting, and accessories to stage each room in the home to its best advantage
• Improving curb appeal to make the best first impression with potential buyers

The business component of the course also includes practical exercises. You'll develop a plan for setting up your company and marketing your professional services. You'll also practice setting up customer contracts and developing your pricing structure. The program includes consultation report templates for both occupied and vacant homes that you can use in your professional work. Simply fill the report out as your tour the property and leave it with your clients at the end of the consultation.

In your final project, you'll choose a property to work with—either your own home or a friend's home—and you'll stage one room from start to finish. This exercise pulls together all the knowledge you've developed over the course of your studies and gives you the opportunity to put your new skills to work. You'll take before and after photos of your project which you can add to your professional portfolio. You'll also be asked to assess the curb appeal of the property you're working on and make recommendations on how to improve it. Don't worry—this project won't require you to physically plant flowers or repaint the living room. If there is anything you can't accomplish in your final project due to time or financial constraints, you simply have to indicate the changes you would have made with floorplans, paint chips, and supplementary notes.

Your Personal Tutor

Your personal tutor—a professional stager—will review your work and provide you with valuable feedback and advice. Available to you by telephone and by email, your tutor will act as your personal mentor and guide to the staging industry. All of our tutors have years of professional staging and teaching experience. They know what it takes to thrive in this exciting field and their goal is to guide you towards success.