Home Staging Tips: Why & How

Home staging is the act of preparing the interior and exterior of a home that is for sale with an emphasis or presentation and appearance to appeal to the potential buyers senses. Home staging is equally important as it is easy. The emphasis on most home staging tips is to keep areas as clean and appealing as possible.

Living Room:

The living room is one of the most often used rooms in the home. The living room is associated with the ideas of family, friends, entertainment and comfort. A potential buyer wants to feel at home when they enter a potential home. Therefore it is important to emphasis the purpose in each room.

• Clear the room of family portraits and other items that say “this is not your home” to buyers.
• Choose a nice and warm paint color for the living room. Use neutral tones in this space.
• Neutral doesn’t mean boring. Liven up neutral colors with colorful accent items, pillows and rugs.
• If the furniture is a bit worn, consider renting furniture for staging purposes. Otherwise, a great idea is to use a slip cover as a low-cost way to enhance the appearance of your couch and chairs.
• Let the room breathe. An overcrowded room makes it hard to focus on the room itself.
• Arrange the room in a conversational way -try different furniture arrangements until you get the best fit.
• If you have a mantle, make sure it’s not overloaded with knick knacks. A couple of well-placed items (like a vase or flower arrangement) are all you need.
• If you have a fireplace in this room, make it the focal point and the star of the show. Arrange seating to face the fireplace.

Kitchen:

This is the heart of almost every home, which means open space is at a premium. While many people may think that the kitchen’s main focus is food, for a potential buyer, the focus is plenty of room for cooking, cleaning and storage.

• Clean, Clean again and then Clean some more… Pay particular attention to the sink, counters, stove, back splash, windows, cabinets and countertops – pretty much the entire kitchen.
• Remove extra countertop items to display counter space including: utensils, the coffee pot, etc.
• Change cabinet knobs and drawer handles. If the cabinets are wood, you may consider staining or varnishing them.
• The same goes for your kitchen faucets, lights and other fixtures. You can make the entire space more modern just by updating these items.
• Do you have an eat-in kitchen? If so, accentuate it by setting a small table. This will showcase the fact that the space serves double duty. Don’t leave it up to the buyers to envision the eat-in kitchen — show it to them!

Dining Room:

The dining room carries the burdens of the kitchen and living room as the area where guests are entertained and presented meals. A dining room should be comfortable, yet sophisticated. Most importantly it needs to be free of clutter so that the buyer can put together a dinner party at a moment’s notice.

• If you have a dining room table that need a little work, use a beautiful cloth table cover
• Set the table with updated, clean tableware and glasses
• Adding a candle(s) or a plant center piece on a dining room table also adds a nice accent
• If the walls in the dining room are bare, try adding some matching paintwork as a focal point

Master Bedroom:

This is an important room for buyers since they’ll spend every night in this space relaxing, sleeping, playing and spending personal quality time with family members. A master bedroom should feel like a fancy hotel room, not a laundry room, gym or storage locker: Think “neutral, comfortable and spacious” when you stage your bedrooms for buyers.

• Make bedrooms appear larger by limiting furniture to a bed, dresser and a couple of small items.
• Use soft, neutral colors with paints and color schemes. Earth tones are always a safe color.
• Make your closets appear larger by remove the bulk of your clothes, shoes and personal items from closets and pack them away in storage.
• Purchase a new and luxurious bedding (comforter, sheets, pillows & accent pillows) to make the bed.
• Remove personal items such as photos.
• Clean the carpets
• Add wall art over the bed and make sure you have table lamps on your nightstands.
• If you have enough room try adding a seating area facing towards the bed, it’s another place to sit while dressing.

Bathroom:

Just like the kitchen, this is an important area of the home because it’s a personal space that is used by everyone for basic hygiene, bathing, and beautifying. These spaces need to be clean and updated.

• Fresh flower arrangements do a lot for a bathroom, both in appearance and aroma.
• Put some high-quality plush towels on the towel rack & add new plush rugs (color-coordinate)
• If your bathroom fixtures (handles, etc.) are outdated, replace them with sleek and modern fixtures.
• Clean those bathrooms right before showing, signs of use, i.e. recently used sinks toilets, turns buyers off.
• Glass shower doors should be scrubbed down Remove it and take it outside for cleaning.
• Change shower curtain to a luxurious yet neutral curtain
• Remove bar hand soaps and use quality pump soap dispenser
• Remove all personal items i.e. (toothbrushes, contact solutions, facemask, tweezers, medications etc).

Overall, whether you stage your home or keep it as is, there are some important factors you must always consider prior to showing your home. Filling your garage with items you are unsure what to do with or ignoring unpleasant odors are common missteps that sellers can make along the way.

Read our Tips for Remodeling Your Laundry Room