Interior stylist and home stager
An empty house sells slowly. I fix that in a week.
I dress houses for the Minneapolis market out of a warehouse I own, so a room can be emptied, styled and photographed inside seven days. Four thousand pieces on the racks, and nothing waiting on a delivery date.
- 11 days Average to first offer
- 38 homes Dressed last year
The difference
What dressing a house does to a sale
Nobody hires a stylist for the styling. They hire one for the four numbers underneath it.
Days to first offer 43 days faster
Counted from the listing going live to an offer accepted.
Sold against guide +4.9 points
How far over the asking price the accepted offer landed.
Showings in week one 2.6x
Appointments requested in the first seven days of the listing.
Photographs used by the agent +9 frames
Frames from the shoot that made the listing rather than the archive.
Figures from the last 24 months, measured against unstaged listings on the same streets, in the same season and the same price band.
The work
The same room, twice
Left as I found it on the walkthrough, and left as the photographer found it four days later.
Before the truck
Three schemes I keep coming back to
Every house gets a palette on the walkthrough, before a single piece is pulled off a rack.
Lowry Hill
Bone and oat
- Bone
- Oat
- Clay
- Ink
- White oak
- Linen
- Unlacquered brass
The house faces north, so every warm thing in it had to arrive as an object rather than a wall.
Kenwood
Green room
- Fern
- Stone
- Birch
- Slate
- Ash
- Boucle
- Honed marble
A dark den nobody wanted. Painting it darker still, and lighting it low, is what made it a room to sit in.
North Loop
Warehouse white
- Chalk
- Grit
- Rust
- Carbon
- Blackened steel
- Jute
- Reclaimed fir
Fourteen foot ceilings need weight low down, so the palette gets darker the closer it comes to the floor.
Paint names are the ones on the can. Everything else comes off my own racks.
Who is doing this
Eleven years and four thousand pieces
A stylist with a warehouse, which turns out to be the whole trick.
I own everything that goes into a house, which is why nothing here waits on a delivery date.
I started on catalog shoots, carrying other people's chairs up other people's stairs, and bought my first truckload at an estate auction in Duluth because a client needed a dining room by Friday. Eleven years later the warehouse holds four thousand pieces and I still buy at auction most months.
A house gets a scheme before anything comes off the truck. I walk it once with the agent, decide what each room is actually for, and then dress it so a buyer can picture a life instead of a floor plan. It is the same job as styling a shoot, except the camera is a phone in a stranger's hand and the deadline is a Saturday.
Marit Solheim, North Loop
What stands behind the work
The store
What is on the racks
Nine thousand square feet on Washington Avenue North, counted every quarter.
What you can book
Three ways to work with me
Priced by the room, installed in a day, collected when the sale closes.
6 rooms
Full stage
An empty house dressed end to end, from the entry through to the primary bedroom, on my own furniture and objects.
- Walkthrough
- Written scheme
- Two trucks
- Install day
- Photography call
- Collection
1 day
Occupied restyle
A lived-in house edited rather than emptied: your own pieces re-placed and re-hung, topped up from the store wherever a room falls short.
- Room by room edit
- Storage of what comes out
- Top-up pieces
- Styling day
- Shot list
4 setups
Shoot styling
Editorial and catalog work for photographers, builders and brands, propped and dressed to a shot list agreed the week before.
- Prep day
- Prop pull
- On set
- Returns
Every package includes the first weeks of hire. Nothing is charged until the truck is loaded.
What it did
Sellers, agents, and what happened next
Every note is one house, with the figures from its own closing statement printed underneath.
We had sat on the market for two months looking like a house nobody lived in. She emptied it, filled it back up with her own things, and we had three offers the first weekend.
Dana Whitcomb Seller, Lowry HillI send her every listing over half a million now. Buyers walk in and stop talking, which is the only review that has ever mattered to me.
Cormac Rhee Listing agent, EdinaThe builder wanted the model unit photographed in a week and I did not believe it could be done. Everything came off one truck and it was shot on the Friday.
Petra Oyelaran Developer, NortheastFigures come from the closing statements, quoted with the sellers' permission.
Published
Rooms that ran somewhere
Features and shoots from the last two years.
Midwest Home
The week before the listing
Spring 2026 Styling Marit Solheim, eight pages
North Quarterly
What a stager actually moves
Issue 19, November 2025 Photography Ines Halvorsen, six pages
Lakeside Living
Four rooms, one truck
October 2025 Styling and props, cover story
The Grain
Buying at auction for a living
Issue 7, June 2025 Interview, four pages
Tell me what is going on the market.
Send the address, the guide and the week you want photographs. I will tell you what the house needs and what it will cost, usually the same day.
Install weeks still open
- March Booked Four houses and a model unit in Northeast.
- April Two weeks left Weeks of the 13th and the 27th are still open.
- May onward Open Booking now for spring listings and shoot work.