People
Natalie Evans, Founder of Little Barn Door.
Published: December 13, 2023 | Updated: 13th December 2023
In the summer of 2019, Natalie Evans was getting stuck into her first major undertaking as a new business owner.
“It was just me and a white van – building furniture, stripping wallpaper, pulling up carpets.”
This was no DIY project. Natalie and her company Little Barn Door had been approached by a family in Lee-on-Solent to help reorganise and redecorate their property ready for market.
Five years on, home staging is still a relatively new industry to the UK, but one which has saved countless homeowners time, money and stress. Not least Natalie’s first big client, whose property sold within 24 hours at guide price.
She was just trying to share with others what had worked so well for her own family.
“After we’d had our second child, we decided to sell our terraced home in Titchfield.
“I instinctively took steps to prepare and walked into staging without even realising it was a thing.
“The estate agent who sold our house said it was the easiest to photograph and the quickest sale he’d seen go through.
“That sat with me for a while.”
Natalie was working in HR at the time, driven by the same curiosity in people which would inspire her pivot into home staging.
“My father used to be an electrician, and growing up, it was part of our weekend activities to go to different houses.
“I was always interested in how people use spaces, their stories, who comes to visit them, where they sit, what they do.”
It’s those stories, she says, that separate home staging from run-of-the-mill interior design.
Whenever Natalie and her team meet with clients – whether homeowners, developers, or estate agents – it’s crucial to get them into the mindset of a person looking to buy the property.
Following a face-to-face consultation and a good look around the home, they’ll draft up a thorough report on the target buyer along with a step-by-step action plan to capture their attention.
“I always say to people, the person who’s going to buy your home is most likely going to be at the same stage in life as you when you bought it”, said Natalie.
“It could be that our 60-year-old client has a craft room at the back of the house, but a 30-year-old may prefer to have a home office or a playroom.
“It’s all about telling a story and understanding how somebody is going to use the space, right down to the items we select – the magazines on the coffee table, pasta in jars, cookbooks on the side or books on the desk.”
Local knowledge helps too. Just recently the team put the finishing touches on a show home in Netley with abstract paintings of the surrounding area and a walking guide to the New Forest.
Some of these items they’ll find around the house, but the rest live at the Little Barn Door warehouse just outside Wickham.
There they keep all the furniture and accessories needed to get a home ready for market in as few as seven working days.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be so quick. Many homeowners choose to work through the action plan at their own pace, painting a room here and redecorating there until it’s finally ready months later.
Natalie isn’t quite so hands-on with the whole process nowadays, though that hasn’t always been the case.
“I didn’t employ my first team member until 2020. Before then I operated entirely on my own.
“For the first six months, I was just educating homeowners and estate agents on home staging.
“It was a concept more readily used over in the States, but I jumped in just as the Home Staging Association UK & Ireland was launching to become one of their founding members.
From left – Emily Porter, Natalie Evans, Faye Mapleson House, Katie Shepherd and Vanessa Marshall
“By lockdown, I was at around about 10 projects, so I brought in a couple of staging associates to help me physically with installations. Today we’re at eight staff.
“I don’t do quite so much furniture building as I used to, but I do sign off every single one of our projects.
“And I’ll still get involved where my design team let me!”
As Little Barn Door celebrates its fifth anniversary this month, all those years singing the praises of home staging are clearly paying off.
The company picked up Home Staging Company of the Year at the South West England Prestige Awards 2022/23, and this October they were named England’s Best Home Staging Specialist at the Global Awards.
But most importantly, it’s also working for homeowners, as 80 per cent of clients achieve their desired offers within four weeks.
So – where now?
“I’ve definitely got visions to continue to grow the company”, said Natalie.
“It’s about how can we can use the business model – and the pulse and the heart we have – to start tackling other complementary businesses.
“There’s definitely room to explore that next year.”
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