When it comes to selling your home, you want it to look as good as possible for prospective buyers. That’s where home staging comes in. The term home staging means decorating your house in a manner that highlights your home’s most impressive features and helps prospective buyers imagine themselves moving in and living there.

According to the National Association of Realtors’ 2017 Staging Stats report, 49% of buyers’ agents believe that home staging has an effect on how a buyer views the home, with 77% saying that it makes it easier for buyers to visualize the property as their own.

In this article, we’ll be running through 10 easy to implement tips on how you can properly stage your home. 

1) Stage where it will have the most impact

Not all rooms are created  equal, according to the NAR report, the living room, master bedroom, and kitchen are the rooms that potential buyers value the most, so concertating your staging efforts there will give you the greatest return on your investment.

2) De-personalize

The primary idea of staging your home is to allow potential buyers to envision themselves living there. In order to do that, you need to turn your home into as blank a canvas as possible.

As difficult as it might be, the best way to do this is to remove personal touches that suggest this home belongs to you, not the buyer.

Get rid of framed photos, clothes, clear bathroom counters of personal items, and remove anything that is overtly religious.

3) De-clutter

Clutter makes a house look small, messy and overly personal. Remember, clutter takes up space, and space sells.

Put anything that you can bare to be parted from in storage. Things like winter clothes, personalized decor, games, children’s toys etc. Remember, the aim here is to sell the house and you won’t have to live like this forever.

4) Run a deep clean

We all like to think we have a clean house, but there is always something else to do. Common places missed during standard cleaning including:

• Baseboards
• Corners of ceilings
• Extractor fans
• Ceiling fans
• Window blinds
• Under/behind furniture
• Under beds
• On top of window and door frames

5) Do some repairs

We’re not talking large scale structural repairs here, we mean taking care of tiny nicks, scratches, holes and other little easy to fix items that can make the difference between selling and not selling.

A little filler and paint here and they can do wonders to make your home look far newer than it is. 

6) Go neutral

Bright colors can be off-putting to buyers as they prevent them from superimposing their own personality on the home. 

If there are any bright colored pieces in your home statement walls and the like, now might be the time to cover them with a color pallet of neutrals, like gray, white, and taupe.

7) Pay attention to the entry points

You never get a second chance at a first impression. When it comes to staging your house, you’ll want to make sure you focus your efforts on the entryways. 

Remove any sort of seasonal decorations and replace them with simple doormat and perhaps a potted plant or two.

8) Add in some green

People react well to greenery and fresh plants. You don’t want to make the place look like a greenhouse, but a vase of bright flowers in the center of your kitchen table and the occasional potted plant will do wonders.

If you don’t have any interest in maintaining plants, you can use fake plans, although you’ll want to invest in some of the more expensive ones if you don’t want them to be obvious.

9) Lighten it up

Make sure all the rooms in your house are as well lit as possible. Make sure all the blinds and all the windows are open. Additional light will make the rooms seem bigger. 

If you’re showing the house after dark, turn on all the lights in your house, including lamps and closet lights, to make your home look more welcoming.

10) Rearrange your furniture

When you’re staging your house for sale, try to rearrange the furniture so that it helps buyers navigate the space, leads them to the areas you want to highlight, but is also open enough that it will help them better visualize their own furniture in each room.

Northwest Realty Group is committed to making sure you are living your “happily ever after” in your dream home.   We’re here to help you make home buying and selling an easy and enjoyable process from start to finish. Our agents will work closely with you every step of the way so you can have peace of mind knowing that we’ll be there for any questions or concerns you may have. If you want to buy or sell property, then contact us today at 702-677-0039!