Staging your home is one of the most important ways to prepare it to be sold. Professional stagers can make your house look amazing by downplaying its weaknesses and accentuating its best features. If you have an eye for it and the time though, you may not have to leave the staging to the professionals. Consider these tips when staging your home to make it more appealing to potential buyers.
Remove the Clutter
The first step to staging your home like a professional is to remove clutter and personal items from your decor. The overarching goal is to give potential buyers the opportunity to see themselves settling into the house. That’s hard to do when your family photos are dangling from the walls and unnecessary decor is cluttering each room. Many professional home stagers will come through a house and remove as much as half of the home’s decor and furnishings to prepare it for sale. As you begin to stage your own home, take a long look at each room and consider what can be removed. You’ll quickly notice that your home looks bigger and more organized as you take away more and more unneeded decor and furnishings.
Rearrange
Just because your current furniture has remained in the same room since you purchased your home doesn’t mean it needs to stay there. Consider different options for the furniture you have, as well as different arrangements within each room. Grouping furniture toward the center of the room, for example, may make the space feel larger and opens the possibilities in the potential buyer’s mind. Also, try moving a lamp or piece of artwork from your bedroom to your living room to give a piece of decor new life while staging your home.
Light it Up
One of the best ways to showcase your home is by making sure each room is well lit. This may mean simply opening the curtains or shades to allow more natural light into a room or adding more light fixtures or lamps to rooms that don’t get much light from the outside. Professional home stagers suggest allowing for 100 watts of light for every 50 square feet of space in each room. It’s also important to add a variety of light fixtures for different uses: task lighting, ambient lighting, and accent lighting.
Experiment with Color
While most home buyers are drawn to neutral tones in the flooring and walls of a house, you can experiment with pops of color throughout your decor. The right mix of accessories, artwork, and color palettes can make a room more appealing to potential home buyers. Adding in small pops of color throughout the decor in each room is simple. For example, choose a warm-colored throw blanket for the end of your bed or a few complementary throw pillows for your couch to add some color to the room without overpowering the decor.
Staging a familiar space might just you a new perspective on your space, but always keep in mind that the more you can do to help prospective buyers imagine themselves there, the better.