Home Staging Tips

How to Stage Your Home Effectively

When you start getting ready to stage your home, it is important to take a hard look at what you have as décor. This is a very subjective area and can turn off potential buyers.

 The main goal of home staging is to help potential buyers see themselves in your home. In order for this to happen, you’re going to need to remove a few things first. Let’s start with personal items, such as photos, portraits, memorabilia and religious items. Although you may be very attached to them, they can make some visitors feel uncomfortable, or they may have trouble picturing their own family there instead of yours.

Although it may look a little stark when all of these items are removed, you have actually achieved one of the primary goals of home staging. You have created a blank canvas for your potential buyers to paint on. Speaking of painting, if you have any art work that takes away from the room, this should be removed as well. Art is very subjective and can make some visitors feel that the room just isn’t right, even if they can’t put their finger on the reason.

Real estate staging doesn’t mean that you have to completely remove any personality from your home. Focus instead on bringing in items like fresh flowers, pretty candles or accent pieces that add to the value of the room in a generic and friendly way. You want to let your visitors fill in the rest of the details in their minds.

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One great tip that home stagers know: buyers like to see a bedroom look like a bedroom.

Catch-all rooms don’t help sell houses.

If you have four bedrooms, show them off by having beds in them. You can “make” a bed with an air mattress set on top of some milk crates or cardboard boxes. A twin or double are fine for rooms other than the master.  Make the bed beautifully with a bedspread (or comforter or quilt) that hangs low enough to conceal your “home-made” bed. Buyers don’t look under beds when house shopping

Home staging tip: Now is the time to put away your non-essential items, organize, control clutter. Thin out your belongings by having a garage sale or donating items. Pack what you won’t need and store boxes in the garage or in a storage unit if you can.