Home staging art to own, hand-painted in sizes that fit most walls

Most staging companies own their sofas and rugs and hire in the rest. Art follows the same arithmetic: a hired picture is a charge that returns with every job and extension, while a painting you own is paid for once and gets cheaper per job with each listing it dresses. Divide its price by the listings you expect it to see, and compare.

Owning gives you three more things. The look: no other stager in town hangs the same canvas. The calendar: a sale that drags on adds nothing to the art bill. The sale: when a buyer falls for the painting above the fireplace, let it go with the house and order the code again. Every iHomeArt piece is sold outright, so all three apply from the day it reaches your store.

For a one-off wall, such as a double-height hall, see oversized and custom-size art. If the art will stay in the property, in a furnished let or a client's own home, see serviced apartments or residential interior designers.

Buy against a kit, not wall by wall: a few sizes, each with several jobs, so any canvas on the rack can go to whichever listing needs it next.

Over a sofa or a bed, choose a canvas at least half, and ideally about two-thirds, of the furniture's width, so the two read as one group. If the work you love is portrait and the wall wants landscape, the Resize route redraws the composition rather than stretching it. Start with landscape works and squares.

Property photographers shoot wide, and a wide lens shrinks whatever hangs on the far wall. A canvas that feels generous in the room becomes a postage stamp on a phone, so go one size up on the wall the main shot faces.

Brushwork and knife-laid paint catch side light from a window, which is why a hand-painted canvas reads as a real object in the close-ups that follow the wide shots. Glazed prints pick up the windows and the flash; our canvases hang unglazed. Texture also gives a quiet palette something to show: browse the textured and Wabi-Sabi works.

A digitally staged wall promises a painting that is not there; a real one looks the same at the viewing as it did online.

A stager is hired on a portfolio of other people's houses. What makes them read as your work is the repeated choice: the same calm abstracts, the same cream-to-olive range, listing after listing.

• Two styles, not six. One quiet style for bedrooms and a stronger one for living rooms: Contemporary Minimalist with Wabi-Sabi, say, or Impressionist landscapes with abstracts.
• One frame decision. Frameless throughout, or a single moulding, black or wood, for every framed piece.
• Pairs and trios. The Vary route paints a related set from one work, for above a bed or up a staircase.
• A series of your own. Where the budget allows, we design a small collection for your company alone, approved as a sample before the rest is painted.

Dressing a developer's model units to a launch date? See show homes and sales suites.

Order the day the listing is signed: painting takes about ten days, and express delivery by DHL, FedEx or UPS another five to seven. Send a photo of the wall with its width for a suggested size and works.

• The awkward wall. A chimney breast or a long landing nothing in the kit fits, painted to your measurement.
• The local scene. The beach, the harbour or the skyline the house sells on, painted from your photograph: see paintings from your own image.
• The particular buyer. Something livelier for a family home, or one bold canvas for a city flat: browse uplifting and bold works.

To be ready for rush jobs, keep two or three unassigned canvases in each core size on the rack.

Every job means two van trips, two hangings and weeks of viewers, and sooner or later a corner is crushed. Because every piece is painted to order, the design is always there to paint again.

Keep an inventory register, one line per canvas:

• code, size, finish and frame colour
• any colour change, with its paint codes or fabric photo
• the date it arrived and the listings it has dressed

With that line, a restock is one message. The new canvas is painted by hand from the same design, a close sibling rather than a copy. The register also shows which pieces earn: those out on every job deserve a second copy; those gathering dust can be recoloured into this season's palette.

Damage on the way to you is rare. If it happens, photograph the piece and its box and send us the pictures; we pursue the claim with the carrier and agree the remedy with you, a replacement or a refund for example.