Virtual staging rules for UK listings

The duty you are working under

UK agents advertise under consumer protection law, which turns on whether an average consumer would be misled by the material information given. Nothing in it bans digital furniture. What it does ban is an advertisement that gives a false impression of the property.

So the question is never whether staging is allowed. It is whether a buyer arriving at the viewing would feel the photographs told the truth.

Stage the empty room, not the condition

Virtual staging works best where a room is empty and hard to read: scale, function and flow are genuinely difficult to judge from bare walls. Furnishing it helps a buyer understand the space.

• •Do furnish empty rooms to show scale and use.
• •Do keep furniture in proportion to the real room.
• •Do not hide damp, damage, dated fittings or wear behind a sofa.
• •Do not stage a room that is already furnished by the occupier without a clear reason.

Label it, plainly

A short, readable label on the staged image is the accepted way to keep it honest. Pixetra applies your wording automatically, and the account holder can lock labelling on so no one in the agency can switch it off for a set.

Keep the record

Every staged photograph should be traceable back to its original. Pixetra keeps the original, the edits applied, the preset used and the person who approved the set, so a complaint months later has a factual answer rather than a memory.