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Andre Mellone bristles at the word staging. The in-demand designer has worked on two model residences, both in Manhattan—one at 200 Amsterdam and another at Richard Meier & Partners’ One United Nations Park on First Avenue. But for Mellone, staging sounds too much like gussying up an empty home with whatever basics are on hand.
“These are legitimate design exercises,” the Brazilian-born creative says of Studio Mellone’s work in both locations. “People are often buying the residences with everything in them.” It’s not just filling up a space, either: “The developers have intricate bios for potential buyers,” he says.
For the 6,000-square-foot duplex penthouse at 200 Amsterdam, the tallest building on the Upper West Side, Mellone was inspired by the 1960s and ’70s—think Halston’s Lenox Hill town house. Mellone appointed the space with Christian Liaigre accent tables, Titus lamps by Danny Kaplan, and Scalamandré silver-leaf metallic wallpaper in the entryway. Mellone won’t talk budget, but considering the penthouse is listed for $38 million, you can assume he wasn’t cutting corners.
These opportunities to collaborate with high-end developers offer a number of benefits to designers like Mellone, who not only get to flex their creative muscles, but can also use them to attract new clientele. Even when potential buyers opt not to purchase a unit in the building, they still get eyes on designers’ work, and may opt to hire them in the future.
“One hundred percent—I wouldn’t do it if that wasn’t the case,” Mellone says. “These [projects] go into the portfolio.”
He’s far from the only designer getting into creating model residences. “Almost every interior design firm is doing this,” Mellone points out. “[Developers] are interested in showcasing that they’re plugged into design—in showing off who they are.” Out of these arrangements, developers get a great-looking space and can enjoy the “editorial attention” of working with a big-name designer, he says. And the major ones—like SJP, which put together 200 Amsterdam—tend to offer hefty (but realistic) budgets for the job too. “Six figures, at least,” Mellone says.
Jean Lin, the founder and creative director of Colony, has also thrown her hat in the model unit ring. Lin similarly tries to avoid the staging label. “It’s a more designed concept,” she says. “It’s a tightrope, really: How far can we push the design without going over the edge? Especially in the early days, that was tricky. Now we can make it clear to the developers and marketing teams that we’re here to make their vision come true.”
Though Colony’s main source of revenue is still creating and selling furniture, jobs like Chroma—a model residence that opened this summer at 1 Prospect Park West in Park Slope, Brooklyn—are a growing part of the portfolio. “The workload is split about 60–40 between traditional clients and decorating properties for potential buyers,” Lin says.
Like Mellone, Lin notes that developers have become educated about the importance of choosing the right designer for a model unit and giving them both creative freedom and an adequate budget. “By the time they get to us, they get it,” she tells AD PRO. “We partner with the marketing side of the Douglas Elliman and [Corcoran] Sunshine and other teams. Those guys are great at talking to the developers about the necessity of a staged property. They’re signing up because they want an interesting environment that’s been crafted by artisans and independent designers and makers.” When clients like Sugar Hill Capital Partners—the developers behind 1 Prospect Park West—“get it,” Lin previously told Home Journal, “a model apartment can become a showcase for evolved ideas, bridging the worlds of gallery exhibits and interior designed homes.”
The developers aren’t the only ones who have leveled up their design expertise. According to Andrew Bowen, a partner at ASH NYC and the head of ASH Staging, consumers now are more educated about interiors than they were a decade ago. “There’s an elevated taste level. You have to work harder. But when we’re done, most people don’t even know it’s staged—they think it’s someone’s home.”
ASH NYC, which was founded in 2009, has some experience. Back then, Bowen says, when development was booming on the Brooklyn waterfront, real estate staging “was really an unmet need.” Today, the firm’s ASH Staging division has a team of nearly 50 people across multiple states and an inventory of 25,000 pieces. That level of offering has helped the studio carve out a major reputation in the industry, and enabled it to be able to fully decorate and furnish a vacant space in 30 days.
The group’s work has also proved to be invaluable during the last couple of years, when global conditions threw wrenches in move-in timelines. At The West on 47th Street in midtown Manhattan, ASH Staging developed a turnkey offering for new residents. “Finding something move-in ready is really valuable given supply chain issues, relocations, and other factors,” Bowen says.
Like ASH Staging before them, Porter and Hollister Hovey spotted an unmet need in the design market. Seven years ago, they launched their own studio, Hovey Design, focusing on interiors and staging that combines vintage style with modern decor. “When we started, we saw a big hole in the market—where either a model residence had basic rental furniture or super-super high end, like IMG, where it looks like a pristine showroom,” Porter says. “You almost felt like you didn’t want to touch anything.”
Since then, the duo has devised numerous model apartments and private homes in Brooklyn and the East Village of New York. Porter says their goal is to create a home that looks like it belongs “to the coolest people you know—the most interesting person at the dinner party.”
Still, Porter points out there are some challenges for interior designers in the staging space. For one: all that stuff. “There’s a lot of inventory management—keeping track of everything—since it might not stay with the client,” she says.
The cadence of staging jobs may not be a good fit for all designers, either. “Our pace is frantic,” Porter says. “A traditional interior design to the level of detail that you need to do can end up falling short because you’ve run out of time or money,” she continues.
Lin points out that the practical challenges of real estate staging tend to overshadow the creative ones. “If the building isn’t done, or the unit isn’t ready, we have no control over that,” she says. “In traditional interior design we have all the control. Here, it’s like, Red light, red light, red light—green light!, and then you’re rushing to get everything together in time.”
And, of course, developers are naturally very tied to their projects—so it can be difficult if everyone’s visions don’t align. To keep stakeholders on the same page, “We have lots of meetings, and we ask them what their wants are,” Bowen says of ASH Staging’s approach. “The developers, the realtors, the PR team. We tie the design in to help underpin all of that. And there’s a sense of trust—our track record speaks for itself.”
Although it can be tricky to balance the needs of the sales teams with the desire to create a beautiful space, the results are worth it: “Clients come to us because we understand that, at the end of the day, this isn’t a self-congratulatory showcase for us,” Lin says. “It’s a sales tool.”
Looking for more intel on the interior staging biz? See AD PRO’s advice-filled story “How to Start a Home Staging Business.”
