How To Stage Your Home - 15 Tips

How do you stage your home? Here are 15 tips to get you started!

As practical as home staging sounds at first, many are unsure of where to start. Highlighting the strengths and downplaying the weaknesses of your home is an integral part of the home staging process. Here are 15 tips, provided by HGTV, to best stage your home for potential buyers.

1. Manage Clutter

HGTV lists managing clutter as the most important thing you can do to prepare for selling and staging your home. One of the major contributors to clutter is having too much furniture remaining in your home. Professional stagers recommend having the least amount of furniture possible in your home to make the space look bigger.

2. Furniture Groupings

HGTV’s professional stagers recommend grouping furniture together away from walls. “Reposition couches and chairs into cozy conversational groups and place pieces so that the traffic flow in a room is obvious.” This will help your staged room not only look more inviting but spacious as well.

3. Feel Free to Move Furniture

Move furniture and décor around whenever you feel necessary. Give your home a whole new feel! By the time you’re done staging, you may not want to leave. This will give new life to decorated rooms and will help to present a fresher feel.

4. Room Transformations

If you have a room in your home that only serves to collect clutter, it is advised to repurpose the room to something more meaningful for potential buyers to better connect with. This will assist buyers in seeing the purpose behind every room in the home you are selling.

5. Home Lighting

Lighting is an integral part of staging your home. HGTV attributes well-lit rooms to a more welcoming environment for potential buyers to step into. Because many homes are poorly lit, professional stagers recommend having three types of lighting in staged rooms: ambient (general or overhead lighting), task (under-cabinet or reading lights) and accent (table or wall fixtures).

6. Paint Rooms to Have Them Appear Bigger

To make a room look bigger, HGTV recommends painting it the same color as an adjacent room. “If you have a small kitchen and dining room, a seamless look will make both rooms feel like one big space.”

7. Neutral and Appealing

HGTV advises those interested in staging their home to paint the walls of their living room a neutral color. Bold wall colors have a way of reducing offers from potential buyers because they often distract from the visualization of the room.

8. Experiment with Color

Just because the living room shouldn’t stray from a neutral color pallet doesn’t mean other staged rooms of the house can’t. Don’t be afraid to use darker and more dramatic tones in bathrooms, dining rooms or bedrooms. This often presents the space with a more intimate and dramatic feel. Painting an accent wall with a bold color is also advised to draw attention to a particular portion of the room.

9. Vary Wall Hangings

Many feel inclined to place wall hangings on the same invisible line, but professional stagers advise staggering art to promote interest and break up any monotony in a room. “Art displayed creatively makes it stand out and shows off your space.”

10. Accessorizing a Room

Accessories have the potential to pull a whole room together and make it appear more inviting to potential buyers. When it comes to decorating with accessories, grouping objects in odd numbers, preferably three, is often the most appealing to the eye. For maximum effect, accessories should be grouped by color, shape, texture or some other unifying quality, according to HGTV.

11. Raid Your Yard

Most staged homes incorporate fresh flower arrangements to make the space appear more inviting. A budget-friendly option for this is to utilize flowers from your backyard or any surrounding area.

12. Serene and Inviting

Incorporating softer colors into your staged bedroom will make potential buyers feel more at ease when touring your property for sale. HGTV also recommends decluttering your bedroom closet space. This shows off your storage space, which always ranks high on buyers’ priority lists.

13. Try Exchanging Old for New

If new cabinets and other kitchen appliances are out of the question, consider simply replacing the doors and drawer fronts. Then paint everything to match, and add new hardware to your staged kitchen.

14. Finish Unfinished Projects

According to HGTV, unfinished projects are known to scare off potential buyers, so make sure to finish them before selling your home.

15. Decorate Your Bathrooms

Professional stagers recommend having bathroom tile professionally painted to make the bathroom look brand new. Also consider putting out items like rolled towels, baskets, and candles to give your bathroom a prim and polished look.

While it may seem like staging your home is more effort than it’s worth, it has been proven that staging can help potential buyers better visualize the space in your home.

The major difference between homes that are staged and those that are not is more than a difference in overall appearance and ambiance. Homes that have been staged cater to buyers and feature a variety of qualities that could be deemed “buyable” to them. Homes that are not staged either utilize previously owned furniture in its original positioning or are primarily empty.

While staging your home may seem like an added stress, it does come with its benefits.

By neutralizing and clearing out the clutter in your home, buyers can better picture themselves living in the space, according to beyondthestagehomes.com.

Staging your house can also make you money. According to the National Association of Realtors, “71 percent of sellers’ agents believe a well-staged environment increases the dollar value buyers are willing to offer.”

1) https://www.neighbor.com/storage-blog/should-you-stage-your-home-when-selling/