Choosing a Design Service for Your Vacation Rental
Furniture-Store Design Services or a Vacation-Rental Designer: Which Fits Your Property?
When you're furnishing a vacation rental in St. George or elsewhere in Southern Utah, you may find yourself choosing between a furniture store's design service and an independent interior design firm that specializes in vacation rentals.
Both can help you put a home together. Which approach makes sense depends on what you want from the investment.
Higher risk appetite
Priority: upfront savings
You need to keep the initial investment as low as possible even if it means increasing risk to your property's cash flow.
The tradeoff: There's a chance you can retain more cash upfront, but you may leave more risks to your investment unaddressed.
Lower risk appetite
Priority: long-term performance
You prefer stronger long-term cash flow and less vulnerability to changing market conditions even if you might invest more up-front.
The tradeoff: You may commit more cash upfront in exchange for lower risk and consistently better ADR and occupancy.
The choice comes down to how much risk to your property's cash flow you're willing to accept—and how much you're willing to invest upfront to address it.
So where does that risk come from?
The four cash flow risks your design team can help address
There are four places where your property can bleed cash. One can be addressed by almost any designer. The other three depend on who you hire.
Risk 1. The property stays unfurnished and cannot welcome guests
An unfurnished vacation rental cannot host guests, which means it can't bring in rental income - even while ownership costs continue to pile up.
Almost any designer can at least make it so that guests don't find your property off-putting.
But that doesn't mean they'll be inspired by it.
The next three risks explain why that difference matters to your property's cash flow.
Risk 2. Guests scroll past unless the price gets their attention
Your listing appears alongside other properties. If nothing about it catches someone's attention, there's a high risk that they'll move on without ever seeing what the home offers unless you discount it.
A property that looks like all the others may still get clicks if it's cheap enough. But then the price is what stands out.
That is the second risk: the property gets overlooked—or needs a lower price to get noticed.
Lowering the price puts pressure on your margins. When demand drops and similar properties start cutting their rates, you may have to cut yours further to compete. Those margins can shrink or disappear.
We help stop the scroll by creating distinctive scenes in the property and featuring them in the listing photos. We call these design moments—areas designed specifically to catch people's attention and make them want to click.
A scene typically stands out through a combination of theme, color, artwork, and feature pieces, with rugs, curtains, furniture, and accessories tying it all together.
Without strong design moments, lowering your daily rates is your only option to stop the scroll.
Risk 3. Guests click, but only the price gives them a reason to book
Getting the click is only the first step. Once guests open the listing, they need a reason to book instead of continuing their search.
Consider two homes in the same community with similar bedroom counts and access to the same amenities.
As with stopping the scroll, one way to make the choice easy is to offer a lower price.
The alternative is to make the property itself and the experience it promises the deciding factor, and interior design is how you communicate that to your guests. Generic design tells your guests on an emotional level that they're going to get a generic experience.
If you can't make your guests see your property as a vehicle that transports them out of their normal lives and a container for creating priceless memories with their loved ones, you're left competing on price again.
Risk 4. The stay gives guests little reason to return or recommend it
Once guests arrive, the property needs to deliver the experience that convinced them to book.
If it falls short, you risk losing the five-star reviews, referrals, and repeat visits that maximize your ADR, occupancy, and - in turn - cash flow.
Interior design supports that experience in three ways:
- Increase feel. A space that photographs well isn't necessarily a space that feels good when you're in it. Your interior design has to impact guests emotionally when they're in it if you want them to actually feel transported out of daily life and anchored in the moment with the people they came with.
- Increase function. This should go without saying, but the space should be designed to accomodate the functional needs of your guests. all too often we see properties that can't seat the entire group for meals, fall short with sleeping arrangements, and force guests into fragmented groups across common areas - disrupting their ability to have a positive shared experience.
- Decrease friction. If your interior designer doesn't anticipate the needs of your guests and furnish spaces to meet them, your guests are going to feel friction that can resultin lower rebookings, referrals, and reviews. Details like comfortable mattresses, blackout drapes, accessible charging, white noise machines, and a well-stocked kitchen make a big difference, and we've seen them show up in guest reviews over and over again.
How do furniture-store design services and vacation-rental specialists address these risks?
Getting the home furnished at a baseline level addresses the first risk.
The other three require the design to make guests click on, book, rebook, refer, and leave 5-star reviews for your property.
That brings us back to your choice: a furniture store's design service or an independent interior design firm that specializes in vacation rentals.
To understand which risks each service is set up to address, start with what its business is built to accomplish.
A furniture-store design service exists to sell furniture
A retailer earns money from furniture sales. They offer discount design services so that their customers buy their products.
It's a legitimate model that can work well to address risk one: getting an empty property furnished and ready to rent.
There are thousands of vendors supplying furniture, artwork, rugs, curtains, accessories, and other pieces for interiors. Restricting a designer to one store’s inventory gives them a much smaller palette to work with.
Using the same limited palette across properties pushes the designs toward the same look and significantly reduces the designer's ability to create something distinctive.
In a market with plentiful demand relative to the number of available rentals, this might be all you need.
When demand slows or more competing properties come onto the market, you're stuck with the problem of all commodities - competing on price.
Whether your budget is limited or you just have a higher risk appetite, what you're betting on with this choice is that supply and demand dynamics will remain favorable.
A vacation-rental specialist designs for the property's ability to earn income
An interior design firm that specializes in vacation rentals focuses on helping your property cash flow at its full potential across market conditions by optimizing average daily rate and occupancy.
That means addressing risks two through four: giving guests reasons to click, book, and have a stay that encourages rebookings, referrals, and five-star reviews.
Addressing those risks requires more work than the “just enough to get it furnished” approach that solves risk one.
Access to thousands of vendors supplying furniture, rugs, curtains, artwork, and accessories gives an independent firm a much broader palette than one store's inventory. That broader palette makes it possible to create the distinctive spaces and guest experience needed to address the other three risks.
Furniture stores can still be part of that palette. For example, Boulevard carries good products, and we use them in our projects—we just aren't limited to what they carry.
For an Alpine Lodge concept, we might combine a sectional from Boulevard with mountain artwork, rugs, lighting, and accessories from other vendors. We can choose each piece for how it contributes to the experience, without having to make the whole concept work within one store's inventory.
Carrying that work through takes time and skill. A boutique firm committed to addressing all four risks devotes more attention to each property, which limits how many clients it can take on and generally means higher design fees.
Compare the benefits and tradeoffs
The table below compares a service built around a retailer's furniture sales with an independent firm offering a comprehensive vacation-rental design process. Use it to evaluate the proposals you receive: the scope, sourcing rules, fees, and availability vary by provider.
On smaller screens, scroll the table sideways to compare both options.
| What you're comparing | Furniture-store design service | Independent vacation-rental design firm |
|---|---|---|
| The service's objective | Maximize furniture sales. Get the home furnished and looking presentable so you can put it on the rental market, while maximizing how much of their furniture you buy. | Maximize rental cash flow. Design the property to earn maximum clicks and bookings, then deliver a stay that encourages maximum rebookings, referrals, and five-star reviews—all to help the property cash flow at its full potential. |
| The risk the service addresses | Solves one risk. An unfurnished property cannot earn rental income while ownership costs continue to accrue. | Solves four risks. The unfurnished-home risk and the risks that leave your property competing on price alone. The goal is to help the property compete on its own merits and cash flow at its full potential across market conditions. |
| The designer's palette | Limited. Often to one store's inventory. A smaller palette naturally pushes properties toward a generic look, making it harder to stand out. | Unlimited. Thousands of vendors give the designer a broader palette. The resulting creative freedom makes it possible to create a property that stands out. |
| Design fees | Generally lower. Discounted or free in some programs because the store makes its money through furniture sales. | Generally higher. You pay for the additional time, skill, and attention needed to address all four risks. |
| Total project cost | Potentially lower. Lower design fees can reduce the total, but may not if the store doesn’t offer substantial discounts on the furniture. | Potentially higher. Higher design fees can increase the total, but may not if the firm passes on enough savings through trade discounts and deal hunting. |
| Availability and your launch date | Potentially sooner. Confirm the team's availability and delivery dates before relying on an earlier launch. | Potentially later. More attention per property means fewer openings and a possible waitlist, so contact the firm early. |
Which tradeoff fits your priorities?
A furniture-store design service may get you furnished for less upfront. The risk is a property that has to compete on price, leaving your margins vulnerable when demand slows or competitors lower their rates.
An independent vacation-rental specialist works to make the property cash flow at its full potential across market conditions. The tradeoff is potentially higher upfront costs and a wait if you don't contact the firm early.
Plan your next move.
Explore guides to furnishing costs, choosing a designer, and vacation-rental tax benefits—plus our Performance Kit to help you put a plan together.