Robb Report Award-Winning Designer Sarah Larranaga on Jet Interior Refreshes That Accelerate Resale

Sarah Larranaga, winner of Robb Report's 2026 Best of the Best, Best in Wings award, says targeted cabin and exterior refreshes can speed up the sale of used business jets and help sellers retain more of their asking price. She identifies dated leather, worn carpet, aging veneers, and yellowing cabin lighting as the fastest triggers for low-ball offers, and recommends timeless, broadly appealing materials — quality leather, updated plating, and neutral soft goods — over trend-driven or highly personalized choices that narrow the future buyer pool.

Larranaga notes that connectivity has become a standard buyer expectation, citing high-speed LEO satellite systems such as Gogo's Galileo FDX, which delivers download speeds up to 195 Mbps in the cabin, and Starlink, which is expanding its supported-aircraft list. She says these systems are now evaluated before buyers even check the maintenance logs, and that pairing either with an updated cabin management system, 4K displays, Bluetooth audio, USB-C charging, and modern LED lighting can bring an older jet's technology profile close to that of a new-delivery aircraft.

On the exterior, Larranaga argues that fresh paint, updated striping, and polished brightwork shape a buyer's first impression on the ramp and influence assumptions about overall maintenance quality, directly affecting inspection scrutiny and the initial offer. Her broader guidance to owners is to spend where a buyer will notice, keep personalization reversible, and ensure professional oversight throughout any completion or refurbishment project; she warns that unsupervised work leads to budget overruns, schedule delays, and quality problems whose correction typically costs multiples of what proper oversight would have required. Her services span interior design, exterior and paint design, completions, and delivery oversight for private aircraft.

This guidance reflects a broader shift in how the pre-owned jet market prices condition: connectivity and cabin finish have moved from optional extras to gating criteria that shape a buyer's first offer, ahead of any logbook review. When systems like Galileo FDX or Starlink are checked before maintenance history, the sequence of due diligence itself is changing, and sellers who skip that layer risk a wider discount regardless of airframe or engine condition.

The segment still runs on perception as much as documentation — ramp appearance and cabin materials set assumptions about upkeep that then color how closely inspectors and buyers scrutinize the rest of the aircraft. That dynamic rewards neutral, reversible upgrades over highly personalized ones, because the resale pool narrows every time a completion locks in a buyer-specific choice.

What remains to be seen is how quickly LEO connectivity becomes a baseline expectation across all cabin sizes and vintages, rather than a differentiator only on newer or larger jets, and how oversight quality on refurbishment projects gets verified by buyers before a deal closes.