Staging your home is a proven strategy for speeding up the sales process. It can even help boost your home's value when offers start coming in. By highlighting your home's strengths and giving prospective buyers a sense of how they'd utilize different spaces, you can help these prospects develop emotional attachments to your home.
Here are some quick tips for helping you along with the staging process:
Pay attention to lighting
Great lighting is crucial for making your home look warm and welcoming. If you notice that some areas of your home are dark and dreary, increase the wattages of the lightbulbs in the fixtures and lamps. A good rule of thumb is to have a total of 100 watts of lighting for every 50 square feet of interior space. Also, you should strive for three different types of lighting per room: accent lighting (on a wall or table), task lighting (such as a reading or under-cabinet light), and ambient lighting (overhead).
Update your appliances
Alright, so you might not be willing to spend thousands of dollars on installing new, stainless steel appliances just for staging. However, studies show that new appliances in the kitchen garner high returns for sellers. This means you increase your chances of getting a better price for your home!
A great, inexpensive solution is to apply stainless steel stick-on coverings to all of your appliances. These coverings can quickly transform an outdated kitchen into one that screams ultra-modern.
Get rid of unnecessary furniture
It should go without saying that, when staging a home, tackling clutter is a must. However, sellers often forget about some of the biggest causes of clutter: couches, chairs, and tables. Having too much furniture in your home can make it seem small and cramped.
Before you start showing your home, take a walk around and remove furniture items that you can live without. You don't need to get rid of everything (after all, you want the space to look lived-in), but you want to make sure you're maximizing available space.
Not sure you're much of a home staging pro? Your local realty specialist can connect you with an interiors expert! Let us know if you're looking to stage your home to sell, or to redecorate, so we can follow up with our top recommendations.