JW Baelly  /  Journal  /  Staging with original art

Notes · No. 05

Staging with original art: a quiet edge

Buyers walking into a staged home see Pottery Barn. Buyers walking into a home with one original painting in the right place stop, look, and remember the room. The difference shows up in offers.

6 min readUpdated 2026By JW Baelly

01 Every staged home looks the same

I tour about 40 staged homes a month for my clients. After the first ten, they all blend. Same neutral sofas. Same framed prints of palm trees or boho line drawings. Same dried-pampas in the same matte vase. The intent is to be 'inoffensive to all,' but the result is that nothing about the home registers.

Real estate photography is the only thing 95% of buyers see before deciding to visit. If your listing photo looks like every other listing photo, you've already lost something. You've ceded the most important moment of the sale to a stock-rental aesthetic.

02 What one real painting does

I am also a painter. I paint large — usually 48 by 72 inches and up. When I list a home, I often hang one of my own works on the wall most prominent in the listing photo. Sometimes the dining room. Sometimes the wall opposite the front door. Sometimes the wall behind the bed.

Two things happen. First, the listing photo is genuinely arresting in a sea of stock-rental photos. Buyers stop scrolling on it. Click-through rate is measurably higher — I track this. Second, when buyers walk through, the painting becomes the anchor of the room. They remember the home as 'the one with the painting,' not as 'the third condo in Koreatown.' Memory is currency in real estate.

03 It's not about my work specifically

I don't think this works because my paintings are uniquely great. I think it works because original art is rare in staged photos. Almost any real piece of art — yours, mine, a friend's — would do the same thing. The market is so saturated with the same five visual cues that anything specific stands out.

What does not work: art that's too small, too quiet, too matched to the sofa, or framed in a way that makes it look like a rental piece. Big, confident, slightly opinionated. Better to choose nothing than to choose timid.

04 How I include this in my listings

For my listings, the painting comes at no additional cost — it's part of how I work. The buyer can purchase it directly from me at closing if they like it (about a quarter do). Otherwise it comes off the wall and goes back to the studio.

If you're an agent reading this and want to do something similar but you don't paint, find a working artist in your network and offer a loan-arrangement. Many emerging painters would happily lend a piece for the photo exposure alone. It's a quiet but real differentiator in a market where every listing looks identical.

For sellers thinking about this

• If we list your home together, this is built in — no decision needed.
• If you have your own art collection, even better. I'll help you choose which pieces stage best.
• If you have neither, I can also connect you with two LA-based galleries who lend pieces for listings on a short-term basis.