Art of Home: Home-stager started with furniture and a decorator’s eye
Shannon McLaren Wilkins and her husband, David, had a habit of buying, upgrading and selling homes, while growing a considerable furniture collection along the way.
So she asked a friend in the real estate industry if she needed help staging a home. McLaren Wilkins had the furnishings, after all.
In continuing to test her home-staging ability, McLaren Wilkins offered her approach to a number of clients and quickly learned, she said, that the homes she and her husband staged sold within a week of hitting the market.
A little over a year ago, the Newport Beach couple, who have a 2-year-old son, started Prairie Home Staging, a company that attempts to achieve top dollar for a listing by creating decorative appeal. Today, they have a portfolio of properties in Bel Air, Newport Beach, Corona del Mar and North Tustin.
With her love of antiques and contemporary accessories, McLaren Wilkins said she looks to create an interior that appears fresh and timeless.
The look of McLaren Wilkins’ own home is the same as that of her clothing — artful, stylish and eclectic.
For more than 10 years, McLaren Wilkins worked as a fashion stylist, helping to dress celebrities including Kate Bosworth for red carpet events like the Academy Awards, Golden Globes and the Emmys and working for designer Stella McCartney. Having lived in New York, London and Los Angeles, she cultivated a big-city and international style and found unique accessories to customize her apparel and her living space.
“It’s about beauty and comfort,” McLaren Wilkins said of home design. “I want my house to look like I collected things along the way.”
Home staging helps sell a house because without it, buyers can have a difficult time envisioning how a property can be used, McLaren Wilkins said.
The goal of staging is to highlight a home’s positive features while downplaying any problem areas, she said.
It starts with cleaning and decluttering, ridding the space of personal memorabilia and often old art and light fixtures.
McLaren Wilkins may shop for specific pieces that would highlight a room, and she’ll rearrange existing furniture and accessories or eliminate them if she finds them dull or ineffective.
That attention to detail often translates into a higher selling price.
According to a 2015 profile on home staging conducted by the National Assn. of Realtors, 49% of buyers said they were affected by home staging and 32% of buyers’ agents believed staged homes increased what potential buyers are willing to offer by 1% to 5%.
Investment banker Paul Zaffaroni worked with McLaren Wilkins on a staging and interior design project for his home in Corona del Mar. He said he gained an appreciation for Wilkins’ design philosophy and aesthetic.
“I knew her help would be invaluable in designing my new home,” Zaffaroni said. “Her time spent living in New York, London and Southern California made it easy for her to grasp the contemporary yet casual environment I was looking for.”
Having worked with a mix of personalities and styles — from homes in the Hollywood Hills to the Balboa Peninsula — McLaren Wilkins said she is always striving to equally distribute textures and colors that create a modern but cozy feeling throughout a house.
“I look at the flow of a house and see if it’s balanced,” McLaren Wilkins said. “I want a home to be customized and comfortable.”
She did so with her own home, but it wasn’t an easy feat when she and her husband purchased the property in September. The exterior was painted gray and covered in river rock, the kitchen with its dark granite was tucked into a corner and the floors needed to be restained.
The Wilkins extended the kitchen with an 8-by-9-foot marble island that can seat a group of guests, added subway tiles and installed white-gold sink finishes. They also added furniture and decorative finishes from local businesses like Newport Beach design showroom 503 Found and South Coast Collection in Costa Mesa.
“It’s fulfilling to help a person with their home because it’s the most vulnerable and emotional time of their lives,” McLaren Wilkins said. “They’re fun projects.”
For more information, visit prairiehomestyling.com.
