Do’s And Don’t’s of Home Staging

If you’re putting your home on the market, make sure you get it right.

10 Do’s in Home staging:

1. Clean
Sounds obvious right? You would be surprised how many people don’t give their homes a thorough clean before putting them on the market. Show your potential buyers your home has been well looked after. Get appliances like ovens professionally cleaned.

2. Declutter
Clutter is distracting. You want your buyer to see your home’s potential. Remove all unnecessary clutter, if you can, start putting things in storage.

3. Depersonalise
Potential buyers need to envisage themselves in your home, this isn’t easy with a giant canvas of your pet pooch staring back at them. Replace family portraits with simple art.

4. Keep it fresh
Make sure your home smells good and that you’ve thrown away those potted plants you failed to keep alive!

5. Define rooms
Make sure it is easy to tell what each room is for. If you can, separate bedrooms that also work as an office and give your home office its own space

6. Ditch the wallpaper
Finding a potential buyer that will like your wallpaper is unlikely. Get rid of it and replace it with neutral paint.

7. Check your flooring
If your carpets have stains, get them professionally cleaned. Better still, replace them with laminated flooring.

8. Lighting
Keep curtains and doors open when showing someone your home to take advantage of the natural lighting. If a room has poor lighting, use lamps to change the look from dull to cosy

9. Walls and ceilings
Look out for cracks, it’s extremely off-putting to a potential buyer and could lose you a sale! Get them covered before you even consider showing someone your home.

10. Finishing touches
Before you show someone your home, make sure you’ve plumped the cushions, put fresh flowers in vases, and turned on the lamps in dark rooms.

The most important thing, the 5 Don’t of home staging:

1.  DO NOT LEAVE THE HOUSE EMPTY 

Cleverly staging a home with the right furniture takes the guesswork out of the process for buyers, helping them visualise living room ideas. Online photos also don’t tell you what kind of room it is unless you put in a bed, couch or desk. Don’t make buyers guess how to use the room and get it staged with the right pieces.

 2. LEAVING PERSONAL PHOTOS ON WALLS

Buyers feel awkward anyway walking through someone else’s house, they don’t have to be reminded that this is still your home. Also, although sellers tend not to think about this, for security reasons, you don’t want complete strangers seeing all your family photos of your loved ones. It’s really not that difficult to take the photos down – you are moving anyway, so start packing up your home.

 Use some Art but remember if there’s too much art, buyers will experience the home like a museum or a junk shop.

 Select and place art and photographs with the intention of drawing the buyer’s eye around the room in a harmonious manner. Years of art on walls will pull focus away from the home and lower offers.

 3. BAD PAINT JOBS

 Old chipped paint sends a message that the home is not well looked after. Intense colours will turn many buyers off.

 4. DON’T GO OVERBOARD ON HOLIDAY DECOR

 If you are selling your home during the fall or Christmas time, we tend to want to celebrate it one more time before moving out. However, that is something that will date your photos if you don’t sell your home quickly. There is nothing worse than looking at online photos of a house decorated for Halloween when your house is still on the market during December

 5. LACK OF CURB APPEAL

 First impressions count. Whether it’s the front foyer or the driveway that needs a little updating, spend the money. A bad first impression is hard to recover from.

 The same goes for backyard landscaping. Make sure things are alive, fresh and dead plants are removed.

If this all seems too much for you, why not get in touch for a professional home staging quote? hello@staged2sell.co.uk