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The Australian Consumer Law does not care whether you meant to mislead. The ACCC states that it makes no difference whether a business intends to mislead or not, that any information or claim provided about products or services must be accurate, truthful and based on reasonable grounds, and that any statement creating a false impression can be breaking the law. In a property campaign that principle attaches to the photographs, the floor plan, the copy and anything the styling was arranged to suggest.

Most styling is nowhere near the line. Painting a dark room, decluttering, replacing a sagging lounge and putting a bed in a room that has been used as storage are all presenting the property honestly. The problems start when the styling is used to conceal rather than present: furniture arranged to hide damage, a rug over a failed floor, or a large item positioned so the photograph never shows what is behind it.

The other live issue is inclusions. Everything the stylist brought in is going out again, and a buyer who forms the impression that an item is staying has been misled even if nobody said so. Agree with your agent how styled items are described, make sure the contract's list of inclusions reflects reality, and keep that consistent across the photographs, the brochure and the inspections.

Styling is a supply of services, and the consumer guarantees attach. The ACCC sets out that service providers must carry out all services using an acceptable level of care and skill, that services provided and any resulting products must be fit for any stated purpose, and that services must be supplied within a reasonable time where no time frame has been agreed. Where those guarantees are not met, the remedies available include repair, replacement, refund or cancellation, and compensation for damages or loss.

The practical value of that is in the phrase fit for any stated purpose. State the purpose in the engagement: this property is being styled for a campaign with photography on a named date and an auction on another named date. A stylist who installs late, or installs something that cannot be photographed as agreed, is then measurably short of a stated purpose rather than merely disappointing.

Get the hire period, the install date, the photography date and the removal date in writing before you pay a deposit, along with what happens if the property does not sell within the hire period. An extension is a commercial conversation that goes much better before the furniture is in the house than after.

Styling makes a well-presented property compelling. It does not make a poorly maintained one presentable, and money spent on furniture before money spent on the obvious is usually money in the wrong order. Buyers at an Australian open inspection look at the same handful of things: whether the place smells and feels cared for, whether the bathroom and kitchen are tired, whether the paint is tired, and what the outdoor space is like.

So the sequence that tends to work is repair, clean, paint, garden, then style. A stylist arriving into a freshly painted, decluttered house can do their job properly and will often reduce the scope, because a clean room needs less furniture to read well. A stylist arriving into a house with a leaking tap and a dead lawn is being asked to distract, which is both less effective and closer to the line the Consumer Law draws.

The exception is a vacant property. An empty Australian house photographs badly and feels smaller than it is, and it is very hard for a buyer to judge whether a bedroom fits a queen bed by looking at carpet. On a vacant property, styling is doing information work rather than decoration.