This sounds like money well spent.
There's a lot of information online on staging if you want to do it yourself.
When I "staged" our houses/condos, I started by decluttering, then cleaning and more cleaning.
Paint colors were the colors you see mentioned a lot on the decorating forum --- if it goes with your furniture, then the grey and greige
I looked at Pottery Barn catalogs, and West Elm, Crate and barrel and Young House Love because that was the target buyer/renter.
I bought plain neutral curtains at IKEA
Lots of flowers and plants (annuals outside), fresh and green plants inside
Updated light fixtures (Ikea or Overstock --- PB lookalikes) or spray painted the fake brass
New shower curtains and towels, new bathroom accessories
"Neutral" art work
Little "nooks", like a reading corner, craft place, but I didn't set the dining table.
Other accessories from Home Goods

Fortunately, the houses/condos sold very fast, so I didn't have to keep them spic and spam at a moment's notice.

Some people can do staging themselves because they have the kind of taste that appeals to buyers in their area and because they have a good idea (or they can separate their own idea of taste from what is attractive to buyers). I think that most people can't do that.

We had 2 experiences (soft of) with staging. In selling one house, we used a husband/wife real estate team. The wife mostly represented buyers. She went through the house room and room and gave me very specific instructions for what to do. Move this here, take that out. Put a picture of X size on this wall right here. I followed her directions very closely and was able to do it myself since her directions were very clear and specific. We went under contract (to one of her customers) the first day the house was listed.

Second experience was in a much more negative market and had a house that had more issues in terms of layout and was a more higher end house. In that case we hired stagers. At the time DH and I were both very busy with work and had limited time. So the stagers also helped us find contractors to do some work (painting some rooms, carpeting, etc). They also did shopping for me to buy things for the contractor to install such as faux wood blinds, some fixtures, etc. This was not really part of staging but I paid an hourly rate for them to do this for us. As part of the fixed staging fee, they brought in some furniture for a few rooms with no furniture or where they wanted a particular look. They also loaned us a lot of decorative items. This was not an extra charge.

For everything they did, we paid a little over $2k. However, this did include helping with the contractor and doing shopping for us so it would have been quite a bit less if they just did staging.

This is much more affordable than I suspected. Even at my low end of the house selling curve, I could see paying for at least a couple hours of advice.

In the boom, I used to work with a realtor friend of mine to get homeowners prepared. I'd charge $500 for the initial consult and a list of specific to them recommendations. Anything else would be extra of course, but the basic consult can get most people jolted out of their "home vs. house" mentality. If it can't, then there's no point in anything further anyway.

When we sold our house I did the initial staging with help from HGTV. We ended up choosing a realtor who included staging as a normal part of the service she provided so we got professional staging as well. The PS added more art and knicknaks and rearranged furniture. This cost $1,500 (which the realtor paid). She didn't bring in any furniture because we had a lot but she would have if she'd needed too but that would have cost more and we would have had to pay that. I think that, like with any service, there is a range of what "stagers" will do. Almost every seller can benefit from having a stager make suggestions then doing whose things that the seller can do him/herself. That should be money well worth spending if it leads to a speedy sale.

We sold a vintage house and staged it with a few things we already had, so no cost. The most important thing to remember is, you don't furnish the house with all the furniture people would need to live there, you just "suggest" how it would look, leaving out large pieces that take up space. Open space is equally as important as furnishings. For example, If you have a dining table with six chairs, take at least two away.

HGTV is ok, but what is presented on TV does not always work in real life. Personally, I hate grey, beige and "greige" - not warm or inviting at all and IMHO, those colors do not help sell a home. If you want to stay neutral, use a sunny, happy hue. We used a warm cream throughout and it looks great, even on a dreary day.

It also makes a huge difference when you clean the windows perfectly, and either raise the blinds all the way up or get rid of them - good light and sunshine are great sales factors. We took down the heavy curtains and put up inexpensive but pretty semi-sheers.