You’re selling your home. No doubt, this is an exciting time — maybe your children are grown and you’re ready to downsize. Or maybe you’re just ready to find your ultimate dream home.

No matter why you’re selling, it can be exciting and scary! Whether you opt to do your own home staging or you hire professional home stagers, this is one of the first steps to ensure your home sells.

From nailing first impressions with impeccable landscaping to perfecting interior design with a fresh coat of paint, here are a few of my home staging tips to bring out your home’s best features and sell your home fast.

Curb appeal and first impressions

You’ve cleaned or replaced the carpets. You’ve bought statement pieces of furniture for the foyer. You’ve even purchased fresh flowers to place in various rooms.

While perfecting your home’s interior is a given when home staging, something homeowners often overlook is their house’s exterior.

The outside of your home is the first thing a buyer sees as they drive down your street and pull into the driveway. Can they picture themselves pulling into this driveway every day? Can they see the home’s potential before they step through the door?

A few ideas for enhancing curb appeal and landing a spectacular home-staging first impression among prospective buyers include:

• Power washing all siding
• Cleaning out gutters
• Repainting shutters
• Adding or replacing house numbers
• Adding fresh mulch to any flowerbeds or garden areas
• Adding a few potted plants
• Consider adding a small table and a couple of chairs to add an inviting air to your porch or deck space

What exterior features of your house can you spruce up and make pop? Start there!

Furniture: Less is more, and placement is everything

It’s not uncommon for a home to accumulate items over the years. One of the biggest culprits of clutter (even in my home!) is furniture. When you live in a home, you fill it with everything that speaks to your tastes.  When you’re selling a home, though, you don’t need compliments — you want offers. Potential buyers want to imagine their own furniture in the space, or consider new pieces to buy for a certain room. So, while it’s essential to stage a home for sale, home staging should be thoughtful and consider potential buyers’ visions.

Keep only necessary furniture

This is just like it sounds. When staging a certain room, keep only the furniture meant for that type of room.

See the table below (no pun intended!):

Here are some home staging ideas for inspiration:

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^{Image 1 by Francesca Tosolini on Unsplash & Image 2 by Zac Gudakov on Unsplash}

Store anything unnecessary

You’re selling, so eventually you’ll be moving into a new home. Consider this step as getting a jump on your eventual move.

But what exactly is unnecessary? Let’s take a look.

Notice how the following home stagings make it difficult for a potential buyer to envision how the space might work for them.

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^{Image 3 by edouard on Unsplash & Image 4 by Martin Jaroš on Unsplash}

Bonus points if you noticed the lighting in these last two pics — or the lack thereof! Good lighting is a must in home staging photos.

Related Reading: Working With a Realtor: 4 Reasons to Say No to FSBO

We’ve covered the types of furniture to keep when staging your home for sale. But what should you move to storage when staging your home for sale? Here are a few examples of items you can take to your storage:

• Dining room: China hutch, corner tables, additional chairs
• Living room: Oversized couches, extra tables, shelves
• Bedroom(s): Bulky dressers, armoires, clothing and shoe racks
• Den or home office: File cabinets, extra chairs, extra tables
• Bathroom(s): Over-the-toilet storage, shelving units, in-shower caddies

Storing these items solves a few concerns, such as keeping your personal and/or valuable items tucked away safely, potential buyers can move through the home easily, and they are left enough “room” to envision how they might decorate the space, and your move-in to your new home will be less stressful.

Places, people!

What’s the best way to make a small room feel a little larger in a staged home?

If your answer is to move all of the furniture into a corner or up against a room’s walls, don’t feel bad — I used to think so, too!

But that can actually impede a room’s flow and function, and even make it feel cramped and rigid. It might seem counterintuitive, but you can make small rooms feel a little larger with a floating concept.

Professional stagers use floating as a thoughtful, stylistic method to bring attention to a room’s natural direction.

^{This is one of my short-term rentals in which I used the floating concept.}

Instead of using a room’s walls to dictate furniture placement, consider positioning a small couch (or a couple of chairs) and a small table atop a cozy throw rug, with a few small decorative items on the table. Throw pillows can be a nice touch, too, if not overdone.

Need some home staging guidance from a professional?

Let me help you get your house as ready as possible for buyers’ agents and prospects. I’m Cait, a Realtor with the National Association of Realtors (NAR), and you can reach me at 248.763.0043. Let’s chat!

Email me

Remodeling? Start in the kitchen

If home is where the heart is, then the kitchen is where the soul is!

While things like modern schedules and technologies mean families spend less time together in general, nearly 40% of Americans have fond memories of eating meals together as a family when growing up and still say the kitchen is the most important room in their home.

So, if you’re considering renovations before selling, some of the updates I suggest (and I’ve made in my own property renovations) include:

Countertops

The Brady Bunch was a fun show — but if your kitchen reminds you of theirs, fresh counter spaces can help bring you into the now.

Cabinets

If you haven’t updated your kitchen cabinets in a while, it’s likely they reflect the time you’ve spent making meals. Give the cabinets a good scrub, let dry, and then give them an update of new paint in a neutral color. Soft grey, light brown, and white are appealing colors that speak to modern homebuyers.

Light fixtures

Outdated ceiling fans and chandeliers are often one of the first items a potential buyer will notice, either due to the item’s obvious age or dated color or finish. Today’s home ceiling fans incorporate energy-efficient fan blades and LED lighting. Bonus points for removing all curtains to show off your home’s natural light to potential buyers.

Other ideas

If you have the time and funds to make additional upgrades prior to the sale of your home, consider cleaning or replacing dirty or otherwise unsightly flooring, such as carpet, tile, and vinyl. Hardwood never goes out of style, but restoration can do wonders to bring out the floor’s original glow. Repainting the walls is another way you can add value to your home staging efforts. Just like the kitchen cabinets, it’s best to stick to light, neutral colors to appeal to a wider range of homebuyers. An interior design professional can help you make your living space just what potential buyers are looking for.

While it isn’t always necessary to renovate your home prior to putting it on the market, even little updates can make a big difference. If you’re not sure what needs a facelift or how to generate interest, feel free to shoot me an email. I’d be happy to lend my expertise!

A deep clean is essential, especially in the bathroom(s)!

According to Homes & Gardens, the bathroom is — surprisingly — not the room with the most germs in your home! That said, however, it’s our perception of a bathroom’s bacteria that makes it a room that requires a deep cleaning when staging your home to sell.

Oh. You already cleaned your home’s restrooms?

Clean them one more time. Trust me!

Of the many things that can turn off potential buyers, unpleasant odors are at the top of the list.

Aside from the typical cleaning and tidying up, check all caulked spaces for staining. If any stains cannot be cleaned, such as those left by hair dye or mold, use a razor blade to cut away the affected portion and recaulk the area. Check for any grout discoloration, and invest in an inexpensive bottle of grout stain.

^{Image 6 by Curology on Unsplash}

When cleaning your bathrooms, think of the nicest hotel you’ve ever stayed in. One of the core tenets of hospitality is that a guest should feel as though they’re the first guest to ever stay in that hotel room.

In other words, your bathroom should appear as though no one has ever…done their business in there.

Play up your home’s storage space

Ever notice that the longer you live in a home, the smaller it feels? The walls aren’t closing in on you — you’ve just likely accumulated a ton of stuff over the years.

Part of staging a home for sale includes showing off more than just the space you can see — it involves showing potential buyers what they can’t see, too, like how much storage space the home has.

Since you’ll be moving soon anyway, take this opportunity to secure a local temporary storage unit.

Then, extremely declutter your home storage areas:

Take everything out of the closets in your bedrooms and hallway

• Divide items into Don’t Need and Really Need piles.
• Move the items you don’t need to your temp storage.
• When it comes to what you really need, this should really only be your best shoes and clothing items. Wash all clothing you’re going to keep in the home. Yep — even if you just washed it. Think freshness!

Install upgrades, like shoe racks and undershelf drawers

To maximize every square inch of storage space:

• Put your shoes on the racks neatly.
• Fold clothes that can be folded and place in your undershelf drawers.
• Hang all other clothes on proper hangers.

Bonus points if you arrange your hanging clothing using one or more of these methods:

• Color: From light to dark
• Type: Dresses, pants, skirts, casual, formal, etc.
• Length: Start with the longest items (against the wall), continue hanging items in order of length, and end with the shortest items. Do this on both sides of your clothes closets to keep the center of the closet open. This lets potential buyers see both the floor and the back wall of your closets.

Replace old towels

• Buy enough brand new, light-colored towel sets that you can replace all hand and bath towels throughout the house.
• Wash new towels and fold neatly.
• Wash and fold old towels and take these to your temporary storage (or throw away the really ratty ones!).
• Store the remaining new, clean towels neatly in the hallway linen closet.

Replace all bedding

• Buy two new complete bedding sets for each bed in the home. Replace each bed’s bedding with one of the new sets, and put the extra set neatly in the linen closet.
• Finally, buy several variously scented potpourri sachets. Place one in each closet and undershelf drawer to greet buyers with the scent of freshly cleaned linens.

Think of the buyer

It’s tough for someone to picture their new life in a house if the home looks like it belongs to someone else. When you’re bagging up your old towels, clothing, and other personal items you don’t need on a daily basis, a staging service can help you further depersonalize the space.

Home staging means removing and safely packaging any:

• Pictures of you or your family
• Framed high school diplomas or college degrees
• Artwork that you or a family member have created

You should also remove anything of significance that you wouldn’t want misplaced (or stolen!) in the midst of a showing or open house.

What you’ve loved about your home will always stay with you. But what you love and what sparks a curious individual on a home search to buy your home aren’t necessarily the same.

Need help deciding what should stay or go? Some DIY staging guidance? If you’re worried about how much professional staging costs, reach out to me! I would love to help.

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