Best Practices for Staging Your Home to Sell

Posted on November 30, 2020

Selling a home can feel a bit overwhelming, no matter how ready you are to make a move. You might have a checklist with a million things to do, from working with a realtor to securing a new place to live once your place sells. But, if you’re ready to sell your home and you want it to sell quickly (and for the price you want!), you shouldn’t overlook proper staging techniques.

Home staging is incredibly important, especially when people searching for homes often look online first. House hunters can flip through photos easily before making their decision to see it in person.

So, how you stage your home is essentially an advertisement for those looking online, as well as a first impression. There are a few best practices you can use to stage your home that will make it more appealing and can pique the interest of potential homebuyers nearby. Let’s look at some of those tips and tricks you can use to sell your home effectively.

Update Your Lighting

Whether you don’t have a lot of time or a big budget to stage your home, you can make a big difference in the way it looks and feels by updating the lighting. Lighting can help to modernize a home by creating clean lines, warm tones, and make specific areas of a room more of a focal point.

Studies have also shown that light can also affect your emotions. Consider some of the following connections when you’re trying to set a mood for your home design:

Bright light heightens emotions
Blue light boosts energy
Natural lighting can elevate happiness

Emotions are often what pull people to make decisions. Think about that as you’re staging things and the kind of emotions you want potential buyers to feel within your home.

If you’re switching out lamps or bulbs, updating your lighting is easy. But, if you’re trying to do larger lighting renovations within your home, be aware of some of the potential dangers. For example, many older homes used asbestos in walls and ceilings. If you have to open up a wall to install new wiring or a new light fixture, make sure to protect yourself with a mask and proper ventilation. Inhaling asbestos can lead to major lung issues.

Deep Clean and Get Rid of Clutter

You want your home to look as big as possible, both in pictures online and in person. One way to do that is to reduce clutter within the home. Simply put, space sells. Even if you have a small home, you can make it look bigger by deep cleaning as much as possible.

This includes not only things in the “main areas” of the home, but the bedrooms and bathrooms as well. Clear out cabinets and closets except for a few minimal pieces. If a potential buyer sees a bunch of clothes in your closet or toiletries in your bathroom, it could make them feel uncomfortable. Not only does getting rid of extra clutter create more space, but it de-personalizes your house, which is another solid tip.

In addition to getting rid of clutter, it’s also a good idea to get scrubbing! Not only is deep cleaning important, but with the current pandemic, you should really disinfect your home before having anyone come to view it. That includes things like:

Baseboards
Window blinds
The inside of your refrigerator
Ceiling corners

It’s also a good idea to make sure everything is in working order while you’re cleaning. Now is a great time to change out furnace filters, get your air conditioning and hot water units looked at by a professional, and fix any repairs that you may have been putting off for a while. The last thing you want is for a potential buyer to avoid making an offer because something in the house isn’t working properly.

A good rule of thumb is to create a cleaning list for every room within the house. This helps to ensure that nothing gets overlooked and can keep you motivated to keep cleaning once one room is finished.

Boost Your Outdoor Space

If there is one thing we have likely all learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that spending time outside can be one of the most rejuvenating and refreshing experiences imaginable in the comfort of your own home. But, even without a pandemic, more people are choosing to spend their time in nature. That’s especially true for millennials.

People want to see themselves enjoying the outside of a home just as much as the inside. So staging your outdoor area to look like a comfortable place for relaxing or entertaining can make a big difference.

Your goal should be to create an outdoor space that looks inviting and comforting all at once. Include cozy furniture, a fire pit, or even an outdoor kitchen to entice potential buyers into seeing themselves having fun in the backyard. You can even include pictures of events you’ve held in your outdoor space to give potential buyers a better idea of how to put it to use.

Staging your home to sell doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, it can be a lot of fun to set up your space in a new way and give it a bit of a “facelift” one last time. Don’t be afraid to get creative and consider what people are looking for when they’re house hunting!