1,085 days on the market across three listings, and one of the last Stanford White townhouses in the city still would not sell. We refreshed it, and it went to contract in 14 days.

Before we were approached to stage this home, it kept hitting the same wall: rooms full of period furnishings and gilded-era detail that read as a house needing a full gut renovation, the kind that can take half a decade. The bones were already modernized, but nobody could see it under the weight of all that tradition.

Our brief was to meld the period character with something current, and the clearest example was the ballroom. Its pistachio walls were inlaid with gilt molding, and the owner had a name for it: the Intimidation Room, because she never knew how to use it and no one ever went in. We kept the pistachio and set it against two deep aubergine sofas by Athena Calderone and a penny-colored coffee table that picked up the copper ceiling. Finally, the room invited you to sit down.

That was the work throughout. A restyle rather than a renovation, editing the pedigree so the upside was obvious at a glance.

The house had not changed. The way it was shown finally did.