Dressed for Success : Model Decorating Relies on Solid Market Research, Creativity and an Eye for the Perfect Accessory

Their names are Chandon and Encantamar and they’re fitted and painted and dressed to kill.

Their lives are short but their purpose is great. They are model homes, a home builder’s most potent marketing tool in the competitive Southern California marketplace.

And the business--or art--of decorating model homes is just as fiercely competitive for the 50 or so interior design firms in the Southland who create these full-blown life-style fantasies within the confines of four walls.

Model-home dressing is an interior design specialty act. It’s commissioned by the home builder, who expects the decorator to work with the architect and the landscaper to select the set of symbols for that market that will make the sale.

The keys to successful model dressing are solid market research, creative design and the careful selection of the perfect accessory--which is very likely to be stolen by a browser during the one- to three-year life span of the model.

With budgets ranging from $14.50 to $60 a square foot, with $22 to $35 the average, designers order from manufacturers and shop wholesalers and retailers for furnishings and accessories they hope will attract the largest number of potential buyers to a house.

Builders give designers three to six months, depending on how the construction crew is doing, to furnish and decorate the three to four homes set aside in each tract as models.

For most designers, the overriding goal is to make the home appear larger and more lavish than it is. The key is to use light colors everywhere, and as little window covering as possible.

And whether it’s a grand opening or Phase 6, the designers face the same three-part challenge: They must attract a buyer, then help visitors distinguish one model from another, and most important, fix the image of the builder in the mind of the potential buyer.

Unforeseen problems can test a designer and force her or him to improvise.

When the deadline is close and the budget small, a wall covering in stock will take the place of the one that was preferred, and ready-made throw pillows will substitute for a handcrafted design that would be too much too late.

Toni Anderson of Toni Anderson & Associates Interior Design in Studio City recalls when she had three weeks to furnish three models at $14.75 a square foot (including her fee).

In three hours, she picked three housefuls of furniture off the floor at Cort Furniture Rental in Tarzana. There was no time to custom order from a wholesaler.

It was “the most exciting thing I’ve done,” Anderson said, and she plans to do it again. The developer was happy with the job--she was on time and under budget--and using rental furniture gave her more to spend on accessories, such as an aquarium and a piano.

Never underestimate the value of accessories, Anderson said. They are the most important tools decorators have to show prospective buyers they “really belong in that home.”

Designer Norman Colburt of Norman Colburt Interior Design in Los Angeles rejects the notion of using rented furnishings in a model home.

Colburt works on better-dressed models--detached homes and high-rise condominiums--on a budget of $30 to $35 a square foot for everything but flooring. “Not one piece of furniture (in my models) is from a showroom floor,” he said. “It’s all custom made.”

The hunt for new ways to market new homes never ends, and Valencia Co.’s communications consultant Pat Willet thinks she’s found one.

She decorated several model homes with live models just for fun for a VIP industry preview, but the models--who were actors--were such a hit that she asked them to do an encore for the public.

Valencia’s marketing coordinator, Terry Taylor, booked them into the builder’s Northbridge tract and told them to act just as if they lived there.

“Mark” welcomed visitors to his bachelor pad as he worked out in his den/exercise room while next door, “Greg” played with the children and his wife “Leigh” did her needlework. The actors talked to visitors about the homes, using the job as an acting exercise.

“The goal was to have prospective buyers enter the models and see themselves--almost literally--living there,” Taylor said.

“It added a whole new dimension to the homes,” said Nancy Hibma, vice president of residential marketing for Valencia Co. in Valencia.

Hiring live models might also help prevent theft, a recurring problem for decorators who must periodically freshen a project--replace stolen items and update others--depending on how long the models are on the market.

Towels, books, lamps, art objects, plates and small kitchen appliances--anything that can fit in a handbag--are stolen from the homes routinely, designers and builders say.

Decorators staple towels together so they can’t be slipped off a rack and they fasten plates and place mats to the table, but compact disc players and pottery, even crayons in a child’s room, continue to be taken by browsers.

To discourage thieves, decorators often buy for size, choosing bigger, heavier accessories than they normally would, while still trying to honor the design concept for the home.

Achieving the goal of making a model home appear timely and timeless is not always possible, although some designers say their work looks fresh for up to three years.

Mike Green, marketing director of Marlborough Development, which builds extensively in Orange County, said a realistic life span is 1 1/2 to 2 years. After that, he said, a project can look dated or shabby. “It’s hard to feel you have your best foot forward.”

Model homes must appeal to the builder’s target market, so home-marketing specialists monitor the daily activities of potential buyers and identify the foods they eat and the clothes they wear, along with income, always the key factor in new-home marketing.

That is why you may see tacos on the table in model homes located in areas where a significant Latino population has been identified.

The taco tactic may seem tacky, but being sensitive to the racial and ethnic makeup of the marketplace helps sell homes. “We have a number of Asian buyers in Walnut,” Green said. “We’re sensitive to their likes and dislikes.”

Beverly Trupp of Color Design Art in Pacific Palisades said “targeting the model to the life style that the builder wants to attract” requires that designers see for themselves where potential buyers shop for clothes and groceries, and where they work.

Designers go to shopping malls to observe colors and clothing styles, to find out “what turns on buyers in that individual niche,” Trupp said. It may take a year or two, she said, “but fashion colors are reflected in the colors of home decorating.”

Designers who work the Southland have a special challenge.

Trupp said they work harder than their counterparts elsewhere, especially in the East and Midwest, where choices are limited by buyer demand for classic or traditional interiors.

In Southern California, Trupp said, “We’re not constrained by history or weather or tradition. Southern California is new. Because of the movie industry, the visionaries who are here” set the pace, demanding more from the entire package: appliances, lighting, landscaping and architecture.

Both builder and decorator approach the creation of model homes with short- and long-term goals, according to Debra L. Bernard, director of marketing for Kaufman & Broad Home Corp. “It’s basically merchandising, a retail business.”

They want the model to sell the home, and they want the model to sell the builder. A buyer may buy elsewhere, but he may be back--or tell his friends about what he saw.

The well-dressed model also gives buyers ideas to use when they decorate, enabling them to further increase the value of their investment.

“Buyers come back,” Bernard said. “They want the plans from the interior designer so they can do it themselves, or have a designer do it for them. (They) can take a niche in a room and they won’t have to worry about how that will look.”

The business of decorating models has boomed since 30 years ago, when builders rarely furnished models before presenting them to buyers. They painted them a neutral eggshell white, carpeted them in beige, left windows bare and the interior decor entirely to the imagination of the buyer.

But as the demand for tract housing grew, builders added decorating budgets to their marketing plans, spending thousands on custom furniture, elaborate window dressings, more exotic flooring and attractions such as outdoor spas and gazebos.

In recent years, they’ve added compact disc players, pianos, computers, fancy kitchen appliances, fine art and custom murals, especially in children’s and infants’ rooms.

Successful model homes now provide a life-like setting that gives prospective buyers a vision of their life style--and the impression that there is no place like this home.

Said Kaufman & Broad’s Bernard: “Now you can picture the family living there, in a variety of activities. It gets people excited. With an increasing emphasis on ‘cocooning,’ home builders want a house to feel like home. This is the ‘Leave It to Beaver’ (era).”

Although some homes are “presold” from blueprints before the foundation is poured, the success of early sales efforts does not diminish the importance of the fully decorated model home. Model dressing is “probably the second most important marketing function--second only to the floor plan,” Marlborough’s Green said.

“It is a fashion production. . . . A good interior designer can greatly enhance the prospective buyer’s perception of the capabilities of the home, its practicality,” he added.

“You want to show how smaller spaces might be adequately decorated to be very appealing.”

Just like homeowners, decorators spend most of their model budget on furniture and floor and wall coverings, but they spend most of their shopping time looking for accessories, shopping some of the same merchants everybody shops.

“I spend a lot of time selecting accessories,” said designer Barbara Brenner of Brenner & Associates in Calabasas. “People want to see value. They want nice things.”

Brenner does her own research to make sure she tailors each interior to the life style of the area. She checks with the Chamber of Commerce, researches local residents and then drives the neighborhood looking for clues: children riding bicycles, adults jogging.

“People are very into their bodies today,” Brenner said. “We have turned extra bedrooms into exercise rooms” and worked with landscape architects to install a back-yard spa. With touches like these, she said, “You get the feeling that somebody really lives there.”

Tracking demographic trends has become an important part of a model decorator’s job.

Unlike move-up buyers with established tastes and cherished furnishings, the younger market pays more attention to model home decor. “They want to know how accessory pieces work with the rest of the design,” said Karen Stygar, marketing manager for Creative Design Consultants Inc. of Costa Mesa.

Designer Norman Colburt, who decorates themed rooms, says the age of the target market is a key factor in the selection of accessories.

In an exercise room designed for younger couples or a single mother, Colburt may slip a Jane Fonda tape into a continuous-play VCR. In the same room, designed for an older couple shopping for a move-down, Colburt might substitute Jack LaLanne for Fonda.

The increasing number of baby boomers having babies has put designers on notice to decorate nurseries and children’s bedrooms with great care. Children’s rooms are themed in ways that identify a youngster’s passion: sports, dance, computers, music.

Trupp sees other trends in the kitchen, master bedrooms and family rooms. She customizes kitchens with a recipe desk built into a counter area, fitted with a computer that could be used to store recipes and the family financial records.

Master bedroom suites are bigger than ever, incorporating sitting areas with living room-style furniture and fireplaces, giving parents a private place to relax.

Family rooms are continuing to grow as formal dining rooms shrink, Trupp says. She uses custom built-ins to house the array of entertainment hardware used in family rooms to hide the wiring and showcase the equipment attractively.

Designers say geographic-based themes continue to be important in the overall design. The Santa Fe or Southwestern theme--cactus, desert browns and beiges, turquoise--has been popular for some time, and does well in areas where it mirrors the decor of community institutions, such as banks, libraries and hotels.

Designer Colburt says a California contemporary theme with a tropical flavor in aqua, mauve and off-white, using large-blade shutters as window coverings, is popular with more affluent Southland buyers who travel.

As themes evolve, so do names of themes. What once was California Casual is now called Textural Contemporary by some designers, and Villa Mediterranean, a standard, has been renamed South Coast Contemporary by others.

One of the emerging themes in Southern California is Pacific Rim, which has an Oriental flavor revealed in colors and textures.

As Asian themes grow in influence, the California look continues to be a marketable export. An effective product can bring assignments in overseas venues where Southern California style now has great appeal.

Toni Anderson designed a project in Torrance that was seen by M. Aoyagi & Co., which hired her to bring her Southland style to a model lobby, penthouse condominium, restaurant and art gallery in a high-rise in Yokohama, Japan, called The Copper Roof.

While they may work from different styles and tastes, all model-home decorators want the same result, says designer Carole Eichen of Carole Eichen Inc. of Costa Mesa.

“When a buyer walks in the door . . . we want them to feel that if they were living here, they would be reaching their next plateau.”

Karen Stygar, Creative Design’s marketing manager, said every model home is dressed with that in mind: “The home must look to the buyer as if the buyer should strive to buy it soon.”

Brenner said she feels she has succeeded when she walks into a model and sees a couple comfortably seated on the living room sofa discussing the merits of the house.

“Look but don’t touch--I don’t like that,” she says. “The house should feel like a home. That’s what you’re selling.”

TIPS FROM MODEL DRESSERS Here are some tricks of the model-dressing trade:

Light walls and deeper colored accents make a room appear larger than it is.

Paint the trim darker than the wall to frame a room and give it a formal finish.

Custom-built furniture, scaled down, also helps enlarge smaller rooms.

Mirrors on living room walls and bedroom closet doors give the illusion of more space.

Keep windows as “open” as possible by keeping window coverings to a minimum. Use shutters or blinds instead of draperies.

Custom built-ins keep books, computers and home entertainment equipment from cluttering up a room.

Decorate bathrooms with modern fixtures and accessories. Install a spa-tub or dual showers.

Mix “masculine” and “feminine” colors in larger pieces and accents to create a comfortable environment for both sexes. Designers say women tend to be more adventurous and men feel safer with a more conservative look.

Dress children’s rooms with a theme. Paint a wall mural and choose accessories that express the theme (ballet, baseball).

Keep your eye on the big picture. Every fabric, wallpaper and lamp should complement the decor.