Dekore
We are Dekore, a small property staging studio based in Manningham
We furnish and style homes for sale across Manningham, Boroondara, Whitehorse, and Banyule, and we take the same care with a two-bedroom apartment as we do with a family home.
The studio grew out of a simple observation. Good homes in the inner-east were selling against themselves. The photography was tired, the styling was generic, and the marketing of a home rarely did justice to the home itself. Four of us decided to do something about it, each from a different angle.
We stage homes in the suburbs we know, for the people who own them, with the care that a home gets when it is being photographed for a magazine, or when it is just being loved. We publish our work honestly and we are happy for visitors to judge the studio by how the site itself is made.
Our team
Claire Whitten
Creative Lead
Claire leads the creative direction of the studio. She grew up in a Californian bungalow in Balwyn North, rearranging the furniture every school holidays, and spent ten years in editorial design for Australian interiors magazines before she turned toward staging. Her eye for restraint is why Dekore looks the way it does, and her style-set vocabulary is why every Dekore home feels coherent from the first room to the last.
Darcy Holmes
Operations & Commercial
Darcy runs the operational and commercial side of the studio. Before Dekore, he spent twelve years in inner-east real estate, first as a sales agent and then as an operations manager for a boutique agency. He knows the rhythm of an inner-east campaign from the agent's side, which is why Dekore's quotes are fast and our install days are quieter than most.
Martha Ellis
Senior Stylist
Martha carries the install end of every project. She spent twelve years as an in-house stylist for a Melbourne furniture brand before joining Dekore to work across more homes than any single showroom could offer. Her sourcing instincts are why our warehouse looks the way it does, and her install sequencing is why a four-bedroom home can be staged in a day without feeling rushed.
Ben Nguyen
Developer & Digital
Ben built the studio's website and runs the digital side of the business. Before Dekore, he was a software engineer in Melbourne, working on property-adjacent software and quietly watching the category mature. He lives in Manningham, cycles to the warehouse most mornings, and is responsible for every detail of this page that you can and cannot see.
How we like to work
We like quick replies. A quote request that lands in our inbox in the morning is almost always answered before the end of the day, and at latest within twenty-four hours. Fast replies are a choice; they are not an accident of scheduling.
We like site visits that do not waste your time. Thirty to sixty minutes is usually enough. The styling lead walks the home, asks quiet questions, and leaves with a clear idea of the style set, the scope, and what the brief needs. The quote follows within a day or two, in writing, with the figure and the scope set out cleanly.
We work with
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