How To Stage Your Home for a Quick Sale
/
If you’re getting ready to sell your home, making the effort to stage your home should be a top priority, whether you hire a professional organizer to help or if you want to tackle the job on your own. If time is limited, focus on staging the most popular rooms in the home including the master bedroom, family room, and master bathroom, as these are the areas that potential home buyers focus on the most when touring a home. (Source: Ally Home 2019)
What does it mean to stage your home? It means paring down the furniture, depersonalizing the house and getting rid of the clutter, or in other words, start packing up your home and moving items out of the main living area.
So, how do you stage your home?
Make rooms neutral but not boring. Embrace a pop of color in a room by choosing an accent color and staging the space with a few elements utilizing that color. Try the 60-30-10 color rule that interior decorators follow. 60% is the room’s main color (for stagging, this should be neutral tones such as grey, beige or off-white), 30% is your secondary color, which should also be neutral but complimentary and 10% is your accent color where you can use a vibrant hue or soft pastel for a pop of color. Add a cozy throw or an accent pillow and you’re done!
Rethink furniture placement. Don’t be afraid of floating furniture away from the walls. Keep an eye out for easy traffic flow and grouping your seating for easy conversation.
Depersonalize the entire home. Don’t leave walls blank but remove family photos and hang simple artwork avoiding religious pieces, nudes, or other artwork which potential buyers might find offensive.
Get rid of odors. Whether they are from your kids, the pets, cooking or trash, open windows and let in the fresh air. Do not be tempted to use plug-in air fresheners as they are a sign that you are masking odors in the home.
Accentuate the features of your home. If you have a fireplace or wood stove, built-in furniture or a new deck, make sure to highlight these areas by cleaning them thoroughly and removing anything in the space that prevents the potential buyers from seeing these features as soon as they enter the room.
Amp up the lighting. Use minimal window treatments, open all blinds and curtains and replace any non-functioning lightbulbs in lamps and overhead lighting because you want rooms to be as bright as possible.
Deep clean. By presenting a clean home you are showing buyers that the house has been well-maintained.
Use mirrors to expand the space. Not only will mirrors make the room feel larger but it will also reflect more light making the room feel brighter.
Minimize seasonal holiday décor. Potential buyers want to know they can enjoy the home year round, not just at certain times of the year. Seasonal décor can distract buyers from the beauty of your home.
Prepare your closets. Potential buyers will open closet doors and look inside. Clear out seasonal clothes and items you won’t be moving with you to your new home. Make your closets look larger. Aim for 20%-30% open space in each closet.
Declutter as much as possible. Remove all the clutter on countertops, in closets and cabinets, and throughout the home.
Put away all toys. Ask you children what they must have that’s near and dear to them and box up the rest. Remind your children it’s only temporary until you are in your new home.
Focus on fresh. Add a few potted plants in key areas (but don’t be tempted to put them on windowsills…keep these areas clean).
Define rooms. Make sure that each room has a purpose. You may have turned your formal dining room into your home gym but now is the time to return it to its rightful purpose.
Curb appeal. The key to getting buyers to enter your home is by getting their attention when they see the outside of your home. Trim the bushes, mow the lawn, plant collorful annuals, repaint the front door. Have easy to read house numbers. Add a fresh doormat, porch lighting and cushions on outdoor furniture
Freshen up the bathrooms. Hang new towels and remove all toiletries from the countertops.
Update fixtures. Polish faucets and switch out hardware if it looks worn or dated.
If you’ve got the time and the budget, you can also consider including these items in your home staging plans:
Remove wallpaper, fill holes, and paint the walls neutral colors
Update or replace worn out/stained flooring
Clean the interior and exterior of the windows
Sell or donate what you won’t be taking with you
If you find that you have a lot of extra furniture, décor and clothing that you need to remove from your home prior to listing in for sale, you should consider temporarily renting a storage unit or pod but give yourself a firm deadline of no more than one year after the day you move to your new home to empty it out completely. Better yet, on moving day have your moving company stop at the storage unit and load all the items into the moving truck to be delivered to your new home. Then, if you have items you find you no longer need, sell or donate them. Either way, you used the temporary storage for as little time as possible.
Remember, when the house feels empty, you’re just about done with staging your home. Go ahead and call the photographer and your listing agent because it’s time to sell!
More Organizing Ideas
Need even more ideas on how to organize your home? Living. Simplified. is ready to help. Take a look at these blog posts or send us an email at lauren@livingsimplified.net and we can work together to reach your organizing and decluttering goals:
How to Organize Your Kitchen in 4 Easy Steps