When you are selling your home, you want it to look absolutely stunning for your potential buyers. That is where home staging comes in.
Home staging is a decorating approach used to accentuate your home’s most beautiful, elegant, and notable features and help your buyers picture themselves moving in and living there. On average, staged homes sell 88% faster and for a 20% higher price than non-staged homes. The impressive results of staging a home makes it an imperative part of selling your home.
Here are four tips for staging your home!
- Remove Clutter
Make your home look cleaner and create room for staging items such as new furniture or kitchenware and decors.
You can also remove miscellaneous items like board games or old CDs and old clothes in your closets; potential buyers are likely to check out your closets to assess the storage capacity.
Items in your garage such as hockey nets or bikes should also be removed from your home for home staging so prospects can see the full capacity of your garage.
The less clutter you have in your space, the bigger it will look and the more appealing it will be to buyers.
The best way to declutter your home for home staging is renting a storage unit. By renting a storage unit during the process of home staging, showing, and open house, you can place all your items in the storage unit and make your home look more spacious and tidy for prospective buyers.
Since you can rent a storage unit on a monthly basis with no long-term commitment, you can rent a storage unit temporarily, only for the duration of the home staging and selling period. This flexibility allows you to greatly minimize your storage expense!
- Stage the Most Important Rooms
Not all rooms are considered equal when it comes to home staging. You want to focus your efforts on the rooms that have the greatest potential to influence buyers’ decisions, and spend less time on the rooms that will not make much of a difference.
Rooms that hold the most importance for buyers are the living room, master bedroom, kitchen, and dining room. These are the rooms that you want to focus on the most when staging a home. Here’s how you can stage the four rooms:
Living Room
The living room is where families come together. Potential buyers need to see that there is enough room to fit their family comfortably in the space. They may also have concerns about entertaining guests or being able to place a television in a convenient location.
An empty space can be difficult to gauge visually, but clutter can make a room feel cramped even if it is not. Focus staging on creating a suitable conversation area. Keep accessories to a minimum, but do include some. For example, instead of an empty coffee table, place a book and a small teapot with a cup, or put a small flower arrangement in a lovely vase.
You also want to include multiple light sources, and leave them turned on during the showings to keep the space lit and bright. Do not forget to clean every surface thoroughly.
Kitchen
Since the kitchen is not usually thought of as a place for furniture, it does not always come to mind as a room that needs staging. However, the kitchen is a key factor in the sale of your home. That means you want to make sure it is presented in a way that makes it look functional and spacious.
Declutter as much as possible, and try to leave no more than three key appliances on the countertop. You can keep related items nearby. For example, a ceramic canister marked “Coffee” next to a coffee maker will look good, but make sure any excess items are put away. You do not want to overstuff your cabinets either, as potential buyers will likely open them. This could require relocating belongings during showings.
Feel free to add an open, strategically-placed cookbook or add a bowl of fruit to the counter. You can also include fresh flowers to bring life into the space. If you have a breakfast bar you can add place settings to show the intended use.
Master bedroom
The master bedroom needs to look like a restful retreat. This means decluttering and making sure all clothing items are properly hung or stored. Make the bed appear welcoming with freshly washed linens, comfortable throw pillows, and maybe an extra blanket near the foot. Turn on table lamps placed on nightstands, but limit other décor. This is another place where adding a book is perfectly acceptable.
Do not worry as much about the rooms that have less influence, such as guest bedrooms, children’s bedrooms, and bathrooms.
Dining Room
A dining room is seen as a sophisticated space, but it also needs to be comfortable. Leaving the space empty can make it feel dark and gloomy, especially if there are few windows or it has a dark paint color on the walls. Staging the space can make it appear larger and more functional.
Make sure the table is the right size for the room. If it is too big, and you can remove a leaf, then do so. Too small? Then add another leaf. Alternatively, you may be able to get a new tabletop for the base to make the table appear larger.
You can choose to set the table with nice place settings, or create a focal point on the table with appropriate home décor items. Often, it is better to put something on the table than to leave it empty: an empty table can seem uninviting, and that is not the feeling you want to inspire in potential buyers when viewing your home.
- Repair House Issues
When staging your home, it is a good time to tackle the tiny nicks, scratches, holes, or other impurities that adversely impact buyers’ views about your property. Start with a melamine foam eraser pad and go room to room removing any scuffs from walls. You may need to do some paint touch ups too, if you notice areas where previously applied paint has chipped. Keep an eye out for any areas that could use a little TLC, then spackle and caulk as necessary. These easy fixes will help you show that your property is in exceptional condition!
- Brighten Up Your Home
Brighten up your space by letting as much light shine into the house as possible to make your house more welcoming. You can open all your blinds, which in addition to letting in more light will also make rooms seem bigger. During showings, turn on all the lights in your house, including lamps and closet lights. Doing this will help make your home delightfully cozy and bright, which will help prospective buyers get a positive feeling about living at your property.
Questions? Feel free to call us at 1.866.647.8673 or contact us online at https://www.selfstorage.ca/contact-us and our staff will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have!
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