By Allan Asplin, Team Leader of the Judy Lindsay Team
Home Staging is the process of preparing your home for the visit by the potential buyer. Home Staging
maximizes the good features of the home and
minimizes the weaker features (because, let’s be honest, every home has weaker features). The key to good home staging is in looking at your home with the eyes of a buyer. If you can remember that then you’ll do fine.
Home Staging can make your home look bigger and cleaner, warmer and more comfortable. It makes houses into homes. It is not hard to do and you can do it yourself.
The Start
Begin with the basics – clean your home, remove clutter (be ruthless with this!), make any needed minor repairs, and so on. Once this is done then the actual home staging can begin.
Some Tricks
These are some basics, easy to remember and easy to do:
- Remember to appeal to all five senses. Sight, smell, sound, touch and taste can all be addressed. A balance of bright and muted colors can make any room more beautiful, a tray of freshly baked cookies adds an attractive smell to the air, a radio playing jazz can be a nice distraction, high cotton count curtains can be attractive, and bowls of fresh fruit can attract a taste. Think about the five senses in each room as you work.
- Use decorations and furnishings to draw attention to unique features in the home. Put a painting over the fireplace, use bookcases to bracket an unusual doorway and so on.
- Arrange furniture in small groupings. This hints at friendly, intimate, more relaxed encounters.
- Display decorative items in groups of odd numbers. The human brain seems to find this more attractive.
- Use mirrors to create the impression of an enlarged space.
- Make sure wood surfaces are oiled and lustrous and that windows and mirrors are clean and polished.
- Remove personal touches (family pictures, diplomas, etc.) You want the buyer to feel like they could simply slip into the home as is and have it fit perfectly.
- Turn on the lights. Make sure that your light bulbs are high-wattage. Make sure that every space is bright and clean and inviting!
Remember, approach the job of staging while considering what the buyer wants – a place they can move into quickly and make their own! Hide what is personal, unattractive and busy and leave behind only the beautiful.
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