A well - placed sofa or piece of art can make the difference between a sale and a lost deal. Shoving the toys and clutter into a closet and declaring the house clean is not enough. A new and growing industry called home staging seeks to optimize the selling power of a house by arranging your furniture and possessions in a way that makes the house appealing to a buyer.

That’s where Pittsford’s Linda Litchfield comes in. Litchfield runs Stage Right, the first company in the area affiliated with Barb Schwartz, the Washington state real estate agent many credit with originating the staging concept.

“The way you live in a house and the way you sell your house are two different things,” she says. More than 400,000 people have taken staging classes from Schwartz. Other companies offer similar services. Many, including Litchfield have been certified as “ accredited staging professionals.” There are more than 2,000 ASPs across the United States, said Stagedhomes.com’s Michelle Mission. "Realtors are jumping on board as well because they add it to their list of services.” Mission said

A retired teacher, Litchfield took a certification class through Schwartz’s company, Stagedhomes.com. Now she’s hoping that the concept, which is popular on the West Coast, will catch on here. A staged home can bring a seller a better offer or attract additional interest from buyers, Litchfield said. There’s more to staging than just giving a house a good cleaning. Think of it as Feng Shui for a home buyer. Three concepts drive staging: cleaning, decluttering, and depersonalizing.

Litchfield said she encourages clients to thin out art on their walls and pull down personal photos. Think of it as a head start on packing, she said. “People aren’t buying you. They’re buying your house,” she said.

Sometimes staging involves renting furniture to spruce up an empty house. Other times it means a simple reorganization of a room. The home seller pays the cost of staging. The cost will vary based on the size of the house.

Litchfield also performs “interior redesigns”- one-day room makeovers that usually involve rearranging a home’s existing furniture into a different look.

Litchfield said she doesn’t dream of a home staging empire, but she does think the concept is catching on in upstate New York, especially among people who want to sell their home quickly.