Sue Roche
Founder and Lead Stylist, The Styling Project
11 years styling | 7,500+ properties | Northern Beaches only
"We focus on what is most important. We guide our clients through the process. We focus on a return on investment. And our properties sell."
Sue Roche founded The Styling Project in 2015 and has spent the eleven years since building it into one of the Northern Beaches’ most established property styling businesses. She still personally quotes around 95 per cent of the work the business takes on, because meeting clients is the part of the job she likes most.
More Than 7,500 Properties
Sue has styled more than 7,500 properties across Sydney’s Northern Beaches, ranging from apartments and townhouses through to family homes and new developments. Every one of them has been in the same patch of Sydney, which is deliberate.
That volume of work in one market is what allows her to be quick and specific. She knows what is selling, what buyers in each pocket of the Beaches are responding to, and how styling needs to shift between suburbs, property types and price points. It is the difference between a stylist who can make a room look good and one who can tell you what a room needs to do for a particular campaign.
From Graphic Design to Property Styling
Before starting The Styling Project, Sue worked as a graphic designer while raising her children. It gave her the flexibility to be at home, and a creative career she genuinely enjoyed. As the children got older she wanted to do something more for herself, and started The Styling Project with a friend without really knowing where it would lead.
The design background never left. Colour, balance, proportion and visual presentation are the fundamentals of graphic design, and they translate directly into styling a property. Her view is that the things that matter most in this work, judging the scale of furniture in a room, knowing what will photograph well, recognising when a space needs less rather than more, are learnt by doing the work, not by studying it.
Eleven years and more than 7,500 properties in, she still considers every property a chance to learn something. Styles change, buyers change, and the market changes with them.
How Sue Approaches a Property
Sue’s starting position is that every property is different, so the styling should be too. She does not work to a formula or apply the same look to every home. More often than not the answer is not to replace everything, but to work with what is already there.
This is why she is a strong advocate for partial styling. Keeping some of the owner’s existing pieces and introducing just enough to modernise and lift the home can completely change how it feels, at a fraction of the cost of a full style.
She is also clear that a property does not need to look like a display home. The aim is real life. Buyers should be able to walk in, feel comfortable, understand how the spaces work, and picture themselves living there.
"We focus on what is most important. We guide our clients through the process. We focus on a return on investment. And our properties sell."
Selected Projects
Freshwater family home
The owner was hesitant about styling because of the additional expense of selling, and it was her agent who encouraged her to go ahead. Sue focused on presenting the home in a way that felt fresh and welcoming without tipping into display home territory. The campaign brought more than 100 buyers through the property and it sold in under four weeks.
New development, Cromer
The challenge with a brand new property is giving each space a clear purpose while adding the warmth that new builds often lack. The expectation going in was a campaign of twelve weeks or longer, so it was styled with that in mind. It sold in under six weeks. Furniture placement and scale did most of the work here, helping buyers understand a space they had no lived reference for.
Terrey Hills relaunch
This property had already been on the market for around ten weeks without selling. The owners changed agents and brought The Styling Project in to reposition the home for a new campaign. Sue looked at it with fresh eyes, improved the flow, made the purpose of each room clearer, and reworked the presentation around the actual target buyer. It sold within two weeks of relaunching.
Where Sue Works
Sue and the team work exclusively across Sydney’s Northern Beaches and the Lower North Shore, from Manly through to Palm Beach, with the warehouse based in Brookvale. There is no plan to expand beyond it.
Editorial Review
Sue reviews and approves every article published on The Styling Project blog. Articles are checked for accuracy against how we actually work and what we see in the Northern Beaches market, and are updated when market conditions or our process change.
Book a Styling Consultation With Sue
Sue personally inspects and quotes the majority of the properties we style. If you are preparing to sell on the Northern Beaches, get in touch and she will walk through the property with you.