Today we’d like to introduce you to Laureane Alcantara.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My name is Laureane, and I’m an interior designer and home stager on California’s Central Coast. My story begins far from here, in Curitiba, a city in southern Brazil. I loved everything about houses and you’d always find me moving my mother’s furniture around because I loved how the house would feel different every time I opened the door. As a kid I wanted to work at a home store just to arrange pillows all day. All my friends were choosing more traditional paths, but I wanted to do interior design, so I worked long hours to pay for school myself.
Adult life, though, had other plans. After graduating I wasn’t sure I wanted to do interiors the traditional way, and honestly, starting from zero as an interior designer when you have bills to pay is not easy. So I quietly set those dreams aside and kept working. I had already met my husband, who is originally from Oceanside, and together we saved so we could live in Spain, where I had the opportunity of doing my Masters. Then COVID happened and life became uncertain for everyone. He decided to join the military, and I followed him, landing in a place I had never heard of before: Vandenberg SFB. But when I found out it was on the California Central Coast, I was all in.
For about three years I worked at a medical clinic in Santa Barbara, settling into a new country, a new culture, a new life. It was a good chapter, but somewhere underneath it all, that creative part of me was still waiting.
Everything changed when I had my daughter. I needed to dream more, to be someone she would feel proud of, to show her that we can do cool things. During those long postpartum days and nights I started writing and painting, I wasn’t particularly good, but that wasn’t the point. I was reconnecting with my creativity without even realizing it.
The desire to return to interior design came back strong, but this time I wanted more freedom and more purpose behind the work. I knew I wanted to work with real estate somehow, but I didn’t even know home staging was a thing. Then my path crossed with an incredibly generous local stager who shared her world with me, her insights, her process, her everyday life. It was a lot to take in, but I was so inspired and decided to make it work.
Seven months into running my own staging business, I have had the privilege of working alongside incredible realtors, property investors, and sellers transforming beautiful homes across the Central Coast, one house at a time.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has definitely not been a smooth road. I started my business with no connections whatsoever, completely from scratch. Long hours figuring out inventory, the bureaucracy behind running a business, logistics, organizing finances to invest in furniture and décor, all of it while having a toddler attached to me. It takes a lot more than just a good eye for design, and I had to learn that quickly. But every challenge has made me more confident that this is exactly what I am supposed to be doing.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I stage homes that are going up for sale, most of them vacant. My job is to bring in furniture and décor so that when buyers walk in, they feel an immediate connection to the space. But what I love most about my work goes a little deeper than that.
I specialize in vacant listings, and my goal as a stager is to tell a story that feels true to the home and to the area it lives in. Whether it’s Los Alamos or Goleta, I study each house, its architecture, its surroundings, its character, and I curate pieces that reflect that. I want a buyer to walk in and feel like they already belong there.
That connection between place and design is what drives my work, and honestly it is what I am most proud of. Every home gets its own story, and no two are ever the same.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
One of the things I love most about working on the Central Coast is that no two cities feel the same. One day I’m surrounded by mountains, vineyards and open ranchland, and the next I’m working steps from the coast. That contrast keeps me on my toes as a designer and I think it has pushed me to be more flexible and creative in ways I wouldn’t have been otherwise.
What I like least is probably that everything feels so far. The distances between cities out here are real, and when you are hauling furniture and décor for a living, you feel every mile of it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://craftedlivinghomestaging.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/craftedlivinghomestaging/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61586641604992
