How to Dress Your House for Sale Success
Try these tips to turn your home into buyer bait.
Ever walk into an open house or a model home and notice how… well, inhumanly perfect it looks? If so, chances are the property is “staged.”
In real estate parlance, that means the place has been dressed with paint, furniture arrangements, art and accessories carefully chosen to highlight the home’s strengths, downplay its weaknesses, and appeal to the greatest number of prospective buyers.
Whether you’re designing to sell or designing to dwell, here’s how the home-staging pros get that “I have to have it!” look. These tips and tricks can make your own humble abode look like a million bucks.
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Recommendation #4. Mix It Up.
You’d never consider wearing the same clothes for days on end, would you? So why force your home to endure the same tired decor year after year?
“We get used to our surroundings, but they can become stale and stagnant. If a chair has been in the same spot for five years, move it!” says Barb Schwarz, owner of StagedHomes in Seattle, Washington, and Concord, California, and coauthor of Home Staging: The Winning Way to Sell Your House for More Money (John Wiley & Sons).
Give yourself permission to move furniture, artwork and accessories between rooms on a whim. Just because you bought that armchair for the living room, for instance, doesn’t mean it won’t look great anchoring a sitting area in your bedroom. Or try perching that little-used dining room table in front of a window, top it with buffet lamps and other accessories and press it into service as a writing desk or library table. And as for that now-empty dining room? Flank an ottoman or cocktail table with a loveseat and comfy chairs for an instant conversation nook.
“When you move things to new spots, you appreciate them again and give your house a whole new look for nothing,” Schwarz says.
By Leah Hennen, FrontDoor.com
Ever walk into an open house or a model home and notice how… well, inhumanly perfect it looks? If so, chances are the property is “staged.”
In real estate parlance, that means the place has been dressed with paint, furniture arrangements, art and accessories carefully chosen to highlight the home’s strengths, downplay its weaknesses, and appeal to the greatest number of prospective buyers.
Whether you’re designing to sell or designing to dwell, here’s how the home-staging pros get that “I have to have it!” look. These tips and tricks can make your own humble abode look like a million bucks.
[metaslider id=2411]
Recommendation #4. Mix It Up.
You’d never consider wearing the same clothes for days on end, would you? So why force your home to endure the same tired decor year after year?
“We get used to our surroundings, but they can become stale and stagnant. If a chair has been in the same spot for five years, move it!” says Barb Schwarz, owner of StagedHomes in Seattle, Washington, and Concord, California, and coauthor of Home Staging: The Winning Way to Sell Your House for More Money (John Wiley & Sons).
Give yourself permission to move furniture, artwork and accessories between rooms on a whim. Just because you bought that armchair for the living room, for instance, doesn’t mean it won’t look great anchoring a sitting area in your bedroom. Or try perching that little-used dining room table in front of a window, top it with buffet lamps and other accessories and press it into service as a writing desk or library table. And as for that now-empty dining room? Flank an ottoman or cocktail table with a loveseat and comfy chairs for an instant conversation nook.
“When you move things to new spots, you appreciate them again and give your house a whole new look for nothing,” Schwarz says.
By Leah Hennen, FrontDoor.com