A DOZEN OF TIPS ON HOME STAGING

How to highlight your home’s strengths, camouflage its weaknesses and appeal to the greatest possible pool of prospective buyers with these home-staging tips. HGTV shares with you its professional home staging secrets.

Step 1: Bye, Bye Clutter!

Getting rid of the clutter is the most important thing that you can do to prepare your home for sale. One in – one out rule: for every new item that comes in, an old one has to leave. What a great balance, isn’t it?

Having too much furniture and accessories is one of the major contributors to a cluttered look., Very often professional stagers when descending on a home being prepped for market whisk away as much as half the owner’s accessories, home décor, and furnishings. That radical step makes any house look much bigger. You don’t have to whittle that drastically, just ask yourself what you can live without, take a hard look at what you have and decide what is not all that necessary after all. Sell excessive or unwanted items via social media market apps – Facebook Market, for example, Craig’s List and other. That way you’ll kill two birds with one stone: declutter and make some money. A friend of ours made over $2,000 that way and found themselves on vacation overseas. Trade “trash” for a foreign trip, what a great deal!

Step 2: Furniture Groupings

Try to furnish your space by floating furniture away from walls. Reposition sofas and chairs into cozy conversational groups rather than pushing all the furniture against the walls. Place pieces so that the traffic flow in a room is obvious. Not only It will open up the room and make it seem larger but also this will make the space more user-friendly, welcoming and appealing. Set your furniture free, liberate it from the wall pressure.

Step 3: Room Transformations

Do you have a room in your house that serves only to collect junk? If the answer is “yes”, convert that room into something that will add more value to your home and will benefit your lifestyle. Create a cozy reading nook by simply adding a comfortable armchair that brings you joy, add a small table and a lamp. Want a new yoga studio or meditation room at home? – lay rubber padding, rug or carpet on the floor and throw a few comfy pillows of your favorite color, maybe even drape fabric on the walls of your basement. Voila – a new yoga and meditation space!

Step 4: Make Rooms Look Bigger

Painting a room the same color as the adjacent room will make it look bigger than it is. For example, if you have a pretty small kitchen and dining room, a monochrome, seamless look will make both rooms look like one bigger space. Another way to create the illusion of more space and give your space a seamless and sophisticated look is to paint the walls the same color as your curtains, drapery.

Step 5: Experiment with Color

Dare to use dark paint in a dining room, bedroom or powder room. A deep shade on the walls can make the space more dramatic, intimate and cozy. Painting just an accent wall to draw attention to a lovely set of windows or to a dramatic fireplace could be enough; sometimes there is no need to paint all four walls. Experiment with painting the insides of the niches and built-in bookcases a color that will make them pop, for example, deep gray or navy will work great with ivory or white accessories (off-white books or clay pottery, ceramics, porcelain).

Step 6: Party of Tree

Remember how in Step 2 we taught you to reposition sofas and chairs into cozy conversational groups rather than pushing all the furniture against the walls? The same is applicable to accessories. Rather than lining up a trio of accessories in a row, imagine a triangle and place one object at each point. When it comes to eye-pleasing accessorizing, odd numbers are preferable, especially three. Scale and proportions are very important. Vary height and width, with the largest item at the back and the smallest in front in your group of three. Professional stagers recommend grouping accessories by color, shape, texture or some other unifying element for maximum effect. Mixing the right accessories can make a room more appealing and inviting.

Step 7: Move Your Furniture

Don’t be afraid to move furniture, accessories, and artwork among rooms. Just because you bought that accent chair for the reading area in your master bedroom, doesn’t mean it won’t look great anchoring a sitting area in living room. Repurpose your little-used dining-room table, put it by the window, place a desk lamp on top and it will serve you as a new beautiful writing desk or library table. Give yourself permission to promote your furniture and find it a new role that may be a better fit for your home and your lifestyle.

Step 8: Bedroom: Serene and Inviting

If you don’t want to spend a fortune on a new bed, just get the frame and headboard, buy an inexpensive air mattress and dress it up with neutral-patterned bedding. Create a relaxing bedroom setting with luxurious linens and soft colors that will make a potential home buyer want to hang out. Always remember to declutter and clean out your closets. Show off your storage space, which sells houses. Having enough storage always ranks high on buyers’ priority list.

Step 9: Bathroom or Spa?

Accessorizing your bathroom can make buyers feel like they’re in a spa. Put out items like rolled-up towels, decorative baskets, and candles. It’s a great way to create a polished look, and it doesn’t cost much to do and of course, declutter, declutter, declutter! When it comes to staging in most cases less is better. No old makeup items, make sure to hide your personal hygiene items such as toothbrushes, razors, sponges, hairbrush and other.

Step 10: New Faces

If you can’t afford new cabinets, just paint them in neutral, popular, top selling color, add new hardware or get new doors and drawer fronts. How about getting a new front panel instead of replacing the entire dishwasher? Check with the manufacturer to see if replacements are available for your model.

Step 11: Finish What You Started

For example, large cracks in the sidewalk on the way to your front door or missing floor boards tend to be a red flag, for example. They cost you less to fix than buyers might deduct from the asking price. Unfinished projects can scare off potential buyers, so finish them.

Step 12: Home Lighting

Great lighting makes staged homes look very warm and welcoming. Many of our homes are improperly lighted. To solve the problem, increase the wattage in your lamps and fixtures. A basic formula is to aim for a total of 100 watts for each 50 square feet. Make sure you have three types of lighting: ambient (general or overhead), task (pendant, under-cabinet or reading) and accent (table and wall). Don’t depend on just one or two fixtures per room. Make sure you turn off all the lights in your house for every scheduled showing. This is a rare case and exception in staging process when more is better.

Too much and too confusing? Ask TNT Real Estate Services Team for professional staging help. Please don’t hesitate to reach out, we are always here for YOU and will make sure your home is sale-ready.