An occupied room and an empty room aren't the same problem, even though both end up needing an edit before they're ready for a listing. A lived-in living room with someone else's furniture, mismatched pieces, and a few too many objects on every surface needs clearing, not adding. A vacant unit with bare walls and a stretch of empty floor needs the opposite: furniture that gives the space a scale a buyer can read. Treating both cases with the same edit misses the point of either one — decluttering a room that's already empty does nothing, and staging a room that's still full of someone's belongings just adds furniture on top of furniture. The real decision isn't which edit produces the better-looking photo in isolation; it's which starting point actually describes the room in front of you. CasaNova Labs runs both operations from the same photo and the same plan, at the same per-photo cost, so the choice comes down to the room's actual state rather than to price or turnaround time.
Every room heading into a listing gallery falls into one of two starting conditions: it's occupied, with someone's actual furniture, belongings, and daily clutter still in the frame, or it's vacant, with bare walls and floor and nothing in the shot for a buyer to measure against. Decluttering answers the first condition — it clears what's already there. Staging answers the second — it adds what isn't there yet. Neither edit does the other's job: running a declutter pass on an empty room has nothing to remove, and staging an occupied room without clearing it first just layers new furniture over old, which usually looks crowded rather than furnished. The room's actual state, not a preference for one edit over the other, is what decides which one applies. Most listings, especially ones with several rooms shot over the same session, end up needing both — just applied to different rooms depending on what each one already contains.
A room someone is still living in — dated furniture, a decade of belongings, a tenant's own things in a unit being remarketed — needs its clutter removed before the photo can do its job, because a buyer scrolling past reads visual clutter as a distraction from the room's actual size and light. This is the more common case on resale listings, where the seller hasn't moved out and won't rearrange a home just for a photo shoot. The fix here is subtraction: clear the existing furniture and belongings so the room's own floor area, window, and finishes come back into focus, without asking anyone to physically empty a single item. If the room reads as busy, personal, or simply too full in the photo you already have, decluttering is the edit that applies, not staging on top of what's already there.
A room with nothing in it — a new-build unit before the first tenant, a rental cleared for re-listing, a house genuinely sold empty — has the opposite problem: there's nothing wrong to remove, but there's also nothing in the frame to tell a buyer how the space is meant to be used or how big it actually feels. Bare walls read as a measurement, not a room. Staging answers that gap directly, adding furniture, rugs, and light sized to the room's real proportions so a buyer can picture a sofa, a bed, or a dining table actually fitting the space. If a room in your listing has nothing in the photo to clear — genuinely empty, not just tidy — staging is the edit that applies, and decluttering has no work left to do there.
Some rooms don't fall cleanly into either category — a bedroom with a single leftover wardrobe and nothing else, a living room half-cleared mid-move with a few boxes and one remaining armchair, a rental where the previous tenant left a handful of odd pieces behind. These sparsely furnished rooms usually need both edits run in sequence rather than a single pass: clear what little furniture remains first, so the room reads as genuinely empty rather than half-occupied, then stage it as if starting from bare walls. Running staging directly on a half-furnished room without clearing it first tends to leave a mismatched mix of the seller's real leftover furniture and the added digital pieces, which looks less finished than either edit on its own. Treating the room as vacant only after clearing it — rather than trying to work around what's left — keeps the final photo consistent.
A single property rarely needs the same edit on every room. A living room where the seller still spends every evening is occupied and needs decluttering; a garage cleared out for the listing or a spare room already emptied ahead of the move is vacant and needs staging. Deciding at the property level — 'this listing gets staged' or 'this listing gets decluttered' — misses that most galleries mix both conditions from one room to the next. The more useful habit is going through the photo set room by room and asking the same question each time: is there something in this frame that shouldn't be here, or is there nothing in this frame that should be? The answer picks the edit, and it can change from the bedroom to the kitchen to the garage in the same listing.
Whichever edit a room needs, the process and the pricing behind it don't change: upload the photo as it was shot, select furniture removal or furniture staging depending on the room's condition, and the HD render comes back in under 30 seconds either way. Both operations draw from the same credit balance at the same rate — one credit per photo, whether the AI is clearing furniture out of an occupied room or adding it into an empty one. Plans start at €42 excl. VAT per month for 3 listings, with 30 photos included at 10 per listing; billed annually, that comes to €420 per year, equivalent to €35 excl. VAT per month. A free trial of 10 transformations, no credit card required, is enough to test both directions on your own photos before deciding which rooms in a listing need which edit. Unused transformations aren't carried over between billing cycles — the balance is restored in full at every renewal.
Check each photo for what it actually shows: furniture and belongings still in the frame, or bare walls and floor with nothing to clear.
Select furniture removal for an occupied room, staging for a vacant one, or both in sequence for a sparsely furnished room.
The AI clears or adds furniture depending on the transformation chosen, from the same photo and at the same one-credit cost.
Label the photo as digitally staged or digitally cleared depending on which edit was applied.
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Try it freeCheck what's actually in the photo. If furniture or belongings are still there, the room needs decluttering; if the room is genuinely bare, it needs staging instead.
Yes. A sparsely furnished room — a few leftover pieces, mid-move boxes — usually works best cleared first, then staged as if starting from bare walls.
Decide room by room rather than for the whole property. Each room's own condition, not the listing as a whole, determines which edit applies.
No. Both draw from the same credit balance at one credit per photo, regardless of which direction the edit runs.
Clear the remaining pieces first so the room reads as genuinely empty, then stage it. Staging directly over a half-furnished room tends to look mismatched.
Both need a disclosure, worded to match what was actually done — cleared of furniture, or furnished with added furniture.
Neither. Both come back as an HD render in under 30 seconds, regardless of which direction is applied.