Home Staging Tips
The first steps of staging a
home, including cleaning, painting,
and de-cluttering. Let's look at the next
important steps, including de-personalization,
placement of furniture and accessories to maximize light and
space, and setting the mood with scent and sound.
De-personalize.
Don’t take it personally when your stager or real estate
agent tells you to pack away everything personal. All those photos, trinkets
and treasures you’ve so artfully displayed throughout your home may be
meaningful and even stylish, but to potential buyers, they are a reminder that
the home has been lived in. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to
take yourself out of the picture and help the next homeowners imagine
themselves living there.
De-personalizing is the hardest part of staging for most
people because it means getting rid of things they hold dear. Actually, it
doesn’t mean getting rid of them — if you don’t want to sell or donate them,
you can simply box them up and rent a storage unit. (We used PODS — they’ll
deliver a storage box to you, you fill it up, then they transport it to a
climate controlled warehouse and deliver to your new location whenever you say
so.)
Pack up and store anything that suggests your family lives
there. Paperbacks, knickknacks, extra food in the pantry — go through each room
one at a time and take away anything that you wouldn’t find in a model home.
In the kitchen, pack up all unused appliances and gadgets,
and put appliances you need (even the toaster) in a cabinet. Some stagers say
no more than one appliance is allowed on the counter, and only if it sparkles.
Take all magnets off the fridge. Remove all other items off the counter except
for a vase of flowers and/or a bowl of fruit.
Ditto for the bathroom — open counter space gives the home a
cleaner and more spacious feel. Put cosmetics, hair products, toothpaste and
toothbrushes in a drawer after you use them each day.
Pictures personalize your home more than anything else, so,
as hard as it is, put those precious memories into storage while your house in
on the market.
In my old house, picture frames themselves were a large part
of my decorating style, so I packed away all of the smaller ones and kept out
only a few large frames with bold lines and textures. Then, following the
advice of a model-home designer, I replaced family, graduation, and wedding
pictures with perfectly lighted, glossy magazine slicks that were neutral and
cosmopolitan enough to become model-perfect decor. (My family still jokes about
how much we grew to like those newly acquired relatives.)
Don’t forget to depersonalize the front of your home; remove
name plaques or other items that personalize the home.
Group and place items to maximize light and space.
Everything you do should be geared toward creating the
illusion of light and space. Think bright and airy, and look for opportunities
to create vignettes so people envision themselves enjoying the space.
Move couches and chairs away from walls and into small,
intimate groupings. If you have large furniture, consider getting rid of at
least one piece of it (an overstuffed chair or love seat), and then group
remaining items closer together (possibly at a diagonal). Some stagers
recommend removing about a third of the furniture in a home to open up space;
others suggest that once everything in a room looks perfect, remove one more
item.
Remove wall clutter too, if you have it. The size of wall
art should play well with the size of the room; too busy, too high, too large
or too small can all spoil the look.
Don’t neglect living areas outdoors; buyers will see them as
additional space, and it’s one more chance to imagine what it would be like
living there. Put up a bright new umbrella and new cushions on your patio
furniture to invite buyers outside.
We even set our patio table with colorful place mats and fun
plastic place settings, so our buyers could envision themselves kicking back
with their friends.
Empty homes are usually hard to sell because most people have
a hard time understanding how a space is used or its actual size without
furniture for scale. If you’ve moved all of your furniture out, your home sale
may depend on having your home professionally staged with furniture and decor
brought in. One goal of staging is to help buyers visualize the potential use
for a room, which is why most stagers will ask you to move that pool table from
your formal dining room.
Arrange furniture so as not to block the natural path
through a room. For example, people should see the foot of the bed from the
doorway, rather than seeing the side of the bed and having to walk around it.
Speaking of the bedroom, stage for romance. Remove the television; most women
don’t consider a TV in the bedroom romantic, yet studies show 80% of the time
it is women who make the final decision to buy a home. Add pillows and go for
luxurious beddings. If you have a mirror or dresser topper, consider removing
it to open up the space.
Keep scale and balance in mind when decorating. When
accessorizing, repeat shapes and lines of other items in a room. A few large,
bold accessories are better than small ones, which tend to look like clutter.
Take a tip from photography and graphic design: You can’t go wrong with
triangular arrangements and groups of threes.
Lighting. A good rule of thumb is to let in as much natural
light as you can, then add main lights and ambient lighting in every room.
Sconces can add additional ambient lighting and draw attention to walls and
ceilings, making rooms appear larger. Open all window coverings, have them
cleaned, and remove them completely if they are heavy or block too much light.
Turn on all lights before a showing, even during the day.
Engage the rest of the senses.
Sound. Set the mood for your home with soft music playing in
the main living areas. You don’t want to offend anyone if they don’t share your
love of country music, but classical guitar is generally neutral and relaxing
enough that it lends to, not detracts from, the ambience.
Smell. Scent is an often overlooked part of staging. The
ideal scent in a home is freshly baked bread or cookies, but who wants to throw
a batch in the oven every time there is a showing? A lightly scented candle
(not overpowering) that smells like freshly baked sugar cookies is a good
alternative. (My personal favorite: Gold Canyon’s Sugar Cookie candle. You can
Google "Shop Gold Canyon" to order online.) To further freshen your
staged home, run a lemon through the disposal, put out fresh flowers on the
kitchen table, and place a bowl of fresh fruit on the counter. Pineapple and
lemons both smell amazing.
Touch. Adding or
highlighting texture throughout your house can be a great way to create an
interesting space where people feel comfortable and want to linger. Thick,
luxurious towels in the bathroom evoke a spa feeling, and a rich, touchable
comforter with extra pillows can make a bedroom feel like a posh hotel.
Hire out or do it yourself?
Should I hire a professional stager or do it myself? That
depends. If you can emotionally distance yourself from your home enough to see
it objectively, as a commodity, and are committed to doing everything it takes
to make it stand out, and you have an eye for style but more importantly a
marketing mind, you might fare well. Many real estate agents will insist that
you at least consult a professional staging company, then decide whether to
hire them or take on the job yourself.
Benefits to using a professional stager include their
knowledge of the market and what level of staging buyers expect to see in your
price range; they have vendors on hand to do any suggested repairs or updates
(painters, handymen, etc.); and they have access to furniture, potted plants,
and other art pieces on hand to immediately fill in spaces where you need it.
Keep in mind that paying to have your home professionally
staged will usually pay off in spades. Homes that are well staged usually
command 6 to 20 percent higher prices than their unstaged counterparts and sell
more quickly. Less time on the market means fewer loan payments for you. Plus,
if you can sell quickly and avoid one or more price reductions, professional
staging could be a worthwhile investment.
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