Tucked just off the square in Corte Madera, Peterson’s Consign and Design has run out of its cottage-style shop at 21 First Street since 1998, making it one of the longer-standing consignment businesses in Marin County. Owner Margie Peterson built the store around a simple idea: furnish it with previously owned and new home decor sourced largely from upscale Marin homes, then curate the mix with a designer’s eye so the space reads more like a small design gallery than a typical secondhand shop. Customers browsing the store find furniture, china, lighting, paintings, and antiques packed into a compact footprint, with reviewers regularly describing the shop as cozy and welcoming despite, or perhaps because of, its small scale.
What separates Peterson’s from a standard furniture consignment store is Margie’s second line of business: home staging and interior design. She and her team, which includes painters, contractors, landscapers, and flooring specialists, stage Marin County homes ahead of sale, and multiple clients credit that staging work with helping their properties sell quickly and above asking price. One seller reported multiple offers and a fast sale after Margie transformed the home following a stalled listing; a real estate agent who has used her for years describes her as a one-stop stager whose choices reliably help homes show better than the competition. That dual identity, boutique consignment shop by day and staging studio behind the scenes, means the same eye that selects which pieces go on the sales floor also gets applied to entire homes before they hit the Marin County real estate market, giving the shop’s inventory a design pedigree that a purely transactional consignment store would lack.
The shop keeps a tight schedule, open Wednesday through Saturday from eleven in the morning to five in the evening and closed Sunday through Tuesday, reflecting its boutique scale rather than big-box retail hours. Because inventory comes largely through consignment from Marin homes, including from clients whose houses Margie has staged, the selection shifts regularly, and longtime customers say returning often is the best way to catch pieces before they sell. Shoppers looking for antiques alongside more contemporary designer furniture will find both represented, since Margie’s own description of the shop leans toward hidden gems for the home rather than any single design era, mixing timeless and current pieces sourced largely from the immediate Marin community.
For anyone in Corte Madera, Larkspur, San Anselmo, Fairfax, or the wider Marin County area looking to furnish a home with well-chosen secondhand and new decor, consign a piece from their own collection, or hire a proven local stager ahead of listing a property, Peterson’s Consign and Design offers both under one roof. The shop can be reached at 415-927-4756 or by cell at 510-915-3376 to ask about current inventory, consigning, or staging availability.
Peterson’s Consign and Design is a Corte Madera, California consignment shop, open since 1998, that pairs curated home furnishings and antiques sourced from Marin County homes with owner Margie Peterson’s professional home staging and interior design services.
