When you put your home on the market, you want to make sure it looks its best to stand out from the competition and get the highest offers. That's where home staging comes in. Home staging highlights the best features of your property, making it more beautiful and more inviting, so that potential buyers can fall in love with it, helping you sell it faster.
How does home staging help increase the value of a home? Read this guide for 5 simple tips on staging your home to attract more buyers.
What is Home Staging?
Home staging is essentially a marketing strategy that can help sell a home faster by highlighting its best features and drawing attention away from the less attractive ones. What that means depends on your home, of course, but it will most likely involve rearranging or replacing furniture, removing clutter, repainting walls, deep cleaning, and adding some new décor. The goal is to make your home more inviting so buyers can imagine living there, which will help your home stand out from the competition, and receive the highest offers.
Does Staging Your Home Increase Its Value?
Home staging helps highlight the potential of your spaces without the need for major renovation works. It's not so much about hiding flaws as it is about showcasing all the great things about your home. That said, potential buyers tend to overlook the negatives when they find themselves in a clean, welcoming, and tastefully decorated space. Therefore, staging is an effective way to increase the perceived value of your home, helping you sell it faster.
The Top 5 Most Important Tips When Staging Your Home
Staging a home is an art form in itself, involving a few strategic steps to make your home more attractive to buyers, such as removing any distractions like clutter and bulky furniture and adding tasteful details like unique artwork or fresh flowers. Think of photos of homes in lifestyle magazines and the elegant but nuanced décor they have. Home staging can make your home look just as attractive!
Since there are many details to pay attention to, staging is best done by a professional, but you can do plenty without their help. Here are five top tips to follow if you decide to stage your home for sale:
1. Start with Decluttering
Clutter and personal objects take up a lot of space. They may make a room look smaller while suggesting a lack of cleanliness, which can easily make you lose the sale. Another issue with personal items is that they prevent the viewer from seeing the potential of your home. You want them to imagine themselves living there, and that will be difficult if your home is flooded with sports trophies, framed photos, book collections, and fridge magnets. Getting rid of personal items and leaving only a few tasteful pieces, such as original art and decorative objects, is therefore, the first step to making your home more inviting and attracting more buyers.
2. Use Neutral Colors
Bright colors can be just as much of a problem as personal items. If they don't appeal to buyers or are too bold, they won't be able to see the true potential of the home. So if you have brightly colored walls in your home, consider repainting them in neutral colors such as gray, taupe, or white, even if it means a slightly larger investment. The same goes for bright curtains, soft furnishings, and decorations. Unless they're used as accents, consider replacing them with something neutral so that the buyer can imagine using the colors of their liking, and not yours!
3. Let the Sunshine In
When it comes to home staging, the simplest, cheapest, yet most effective way to make a space look its best is to let in some natural light. A bright, sunlit room feels fresher, cleaner, and larger. A dark room does the opposite! So make sure to open the blinds to let some natural light in.
If you have rooms where there isn't enough natural light to play with, consider painting the walls a neutral color, removing dark curtains, and switching on the lights during visits.
4. Deep Clean Each Room
Even if you have taken good care of your home and cleaned it regularly, there may be areas you've neglected such as your window blinds, kitchen countertops, or the corners of your ceilings. Now is the time to clean every square inch of your home. Why? Because a clean house makes a good impression on buyers, it sends the message that you've taken good care of the place, so there won't be any surprises when they move in. Buyers are also more likely to spend more time in a space that's clean and fresh, giving you more time to show off your home's greatest features.
5. Make a Strong First Impression
No matter how tastefully you've decorated your home, if you neglect the outside, you'll start off on the wrong foot with buyers. So take the time to spruce up your front porch: remove clutter and seasonal decorations, wash down the front steps, and add a few flower pots to make the space more inviting. Take care of the lawn in your yard and add some new landscaping if needed. If the entrance looks nice and welcoming, the buyer will also be more excited about seeing the rest of the house.
The Takeaway
Staging your home helps to highlight its best features and draw attention away from the less attractive ones. This involves cleaning, decluttering, and depersonalizing the space, as well as adding a few statement pieces, such as original art and neutral décor to help buyers see the home's full potential and imagine themselves living there. Not only will this increase the perceived value of the home, but it will also help stand out from the competition and get you the highest bids. Whether done by a professional or by yourself, if you want to sell your home quickly, consider investing in home staging!