Staging a home can take many forms. Often people think of staging as making the home looking completely fake. For a certain house that may work, but overall, staging is the quest to make the home look as warm, inviting, and as attractive as possible.
An empty or dated home may require bringing in professional stagers with outside furniture and accessories. Other homes may just need a good purging. Long ago we heard the mantra, “if it doesn’t make the house look better, get rid of it.” This can be freeing if you’ve been displaying items out of a sense of obligation – Aunt Suzie gave you this lamp as a wedding present – and it can be fun to give small rooms a refresh that you’ll wish you did long ago.
How to start?
- Start packing! Use you garage (or have a storage pod delivered), get some boxes, and pack everything you can live without that doesn’t add to the look of your home: kids’ toys, books, extra furniture, out it goes!
- Enlist help! We had a client whose friends volunteered to help. In they came with pretty plants and accessories and out went 90% of the books, oversized furniture, and anything that didn’t meet their approval. The client watched in amazement as her home was transformed.
- Patch, paint, clean! Ask your real estate agent to do a walkthrough and ask for a to-do list. A new set of eyes can help – once we look at something for 6 months we stop seeing that the trim work needs a good scrubbing or a new coat of paint. And don’t forget to have the carpets shampooed!
- Less is more. Hard surfaces (tables, counters) should have as little on them as possible. It’s scary, but buyers will be.