Staging Tips for Every Room

 

In recent years, home staging has become an effective way to increase home value and appeal to large pools of prospective buyers. By highlighting home strengths and downplaying home weaknesses, our real estate agents see that home staging is a great way to sell homes faster with higher profits. Take a look at 6 home staging tips that will increase sales.

1. Clean and Declutter
   To impress potential buyers and increase home value, you must clean and get rid of clutter. An untidy room with too much furniture distracts buyers and makes spaces feel small and crowded. When professionals stage a home, they remove many furnishings and take them to a storage unit so rooms look bigger and more open. Buyers need to feel comfortable moving through open rooms that emphasize appealing features like fireplaces, large windows, crown molding, built-in bookshelves, and recessed lighting.

2. Depersonalize Spaces
   Potential buyers need to picture themselves living in your home, but that's hard to do if spaces are filled with personal items and family mementos. To create a blank slate, depersonalize your spaces by removing family photos, family scrapbooks, framed diplomas, special awards, your children's artwork, and personal art collections. Pack these items up and put them in storage while you're showing your home to potential buyers.
   
   
3. Define Rooms
   Staging makes sure that each room has a defined purpose. This helps buyers see how to maximize the home's square footage. They can quickly identify the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, closets, and special spaces. A finished attic can be staged as an office or extra bedroom. A finished basement can be staged as a child's playroom or a home theater. Staging provides visual possibilities that many home buyers overlook.
   
   
4. Highlight Storage Areas
   Storage always ranks high on the list for home buyers, so highlight your storage features around the house. Keep your closets neat and uncluttered by removing some of the hanging clothes and adding shoe racks and under-shelf baskets for accessories. Straighten out your linen closets, tidy up bathroom drawers and cabinets, and get rid of old or extra pots and pans in kitchen cabinets. The first thing buyers will do is open closets and cabinets to check out the storage space.
   
   
5. Stick to a Neutral Color Palette
   When showing your home, it's unlikely that potential buyers will like your custom paint colors and wallpapers, even if they are great. You may love your orange kitchen, but people's tastes in colors are highly personal. Your best bet is to tear down the patterned wallpaper and paint the walls with a warm, neutral color that opens up the space and invites a world of design possibilities for the new homeowner. Don't be tempted to paint over old wallpaper because the pattern may show through, and the buyer will see that as costly repairs that have to be tackled later.
   
   
6. Take Advantage of Natural Lighting
   When showing your home to potential buyers, open all curtains and blinds for maximum natural light. This makes your home appear brighter and more inviting and prevents buyers from hunting for light switches in every room. Check the light bulbs in all rooms and closets to make sure they are working properly. Check all table lamps, chandeliers, pendants, and recessed fixtures to make sure lights come on when activated, then dust the fixtures. If you have outdated or broken light fixtures, replacing them is an inexpensive way to boost visual appeal.

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