Did you know that staging a home had an effect on 40% of home viewers in 2019?
Home staging also helped 83% of viewers visualize the space as their own future home.
Taking this step makes an impact on selling your property. Read on for 9 home staging tips to help sell your home fast.
1. Stage Where It Matters
The most important areas of the home for buyers are the living room, master bedroom, and kitchen, and dining room.
According to NAR, these were the most commonly staged areas of the home in 2019. 93% of living rooms were staged, 78% of master bedrooms, 84% of kitchens, and 72% of dining rooms.
These numbers prove that home staging has an effect on home buyers’ experience. They’re where homeowners spend the most time and want the best atmosphere.
2. Create a Flow in Your Home
While those four rooms are the most important ones in your home, you should make the viewer want to travel into every room.
It’s possible to create a guide in any home. Create an inviting entryway, or place bright flowers into a room that’s less visited.
Arrange all the furniture toward a feature you’d like to highlight, or the next room you’d like home viewers to travel. Bedrooms, bathrooms, and even basements are just as important as the main living spaces.
Placing all the attention on the living room, master bedroom, kitchen, or dining room makes home viewers forget about the other rooms in the house.
You want home viewers to remember all of it.
3. Clean Up
This brings us to the next tip. You want the home to be remembered for the right reasons, right? Nobody wants their space to be “the dirty house” that home viewers stray away from.
You should power wash the sidewalks and siding of the house. Buy new patio furniture or clean what is already there. Buy new plants or shrubbery.
Make the exterior feel inviting.
If you have specific blankets or rugs that can be thrown onto or underneath the patio furniture as you leave before a home viewing, that’s even better.
The interior should be clean too. Remove any clutter from the home altogether. Don’t shove things into closets.
4. Buy Flowers
It’s already been mentioned twice, and that’s because this is an important tip. Greenery should go everywhere you can stick it.
Buy plants for the outdoors, for the indoors, for the bedrooms, dining room, kitchen. It makes the home feel inviting, peaceful, and even loving and lived in.
Be real with what plants can go where according to the lighting they need. Flowers on the dining room table or kitchen counter are always a practical choice. Small plants in the bedrooms or bathrooms are good to keep on hand.
Faux plants are useful but should be used sparingly. If you’re trying to fill a bathroom with no windows or a dark corner of any room, a faux plant may be best here.
It’s important to remember that real plants are natural air purifiers. They make any home feel inviting. People are impressed when they see an abundance of plants that are well taken care of.
5. Choose Neutral Colors
You might like bright colors in your home, but that doesn’t mean everybody else does.
Opting for a range of cool tones like gray, white, or even some green can set a modern, but still cozy feeling. Opting for a range of warm tones like taupe, beige, and again, green sets an earthy, lived-in tone.
6. Show Off the Closets
Home viewers want to see the storage. If there’s an abundance of it, that’s even better. If there isn’t, showing off what is there makes its presence feel more abundant.
No matter how much storage you have, allowing home viewers to see their future storage makes them start thinking about things they could place there. It also makes them think about storage solutions they could come up with.
If you have a large walk-in closet, this is a great place to store one of those faux plants.
7. Buy Laundry Beads
These are great if you can handle the smell. If you’re sensitive to scents—and are living in your home throughout the selling process—this tip may not be for you.
Laundry beads can make the entire home smell fresh and clean with little to no effort on your part. You’re just adding one more step while doing laundry.
Home viewers smell freshly laundered linen and think, “Wow, I can’t wait for my home to smell like this.”
8. Restrict Access to Some Areas of the Home
This tip is meant for those living in the home throughout the selling process. Living in a space you’re trying to sell can be stressful already, especially if you have children or pets. Restricting access to certain spaces helps the clean-up move faster.
If you get an unexpected viewing request, it’s easier to be out the door quickly.
Keep a bag on hand at all times for toys to be placed in that can be taken with you so there’s no potential for mess during the viewing.
9. Style for the Season
If it’s winter, place more blankets around the home. Feel free to decorate for any holiday you celebrate, but remember that not every home viewer celebrates the same thing.
Put a tea kettle and some mugs around the kitchen or dining room. Make the space warm and inviting.
If it’s summer, keep things bright—or at least keep in mind that it’s no longer Winter.
If you have a large outdoor space or pool, make sure it’s clean and decorate it accordingly. Allow the home viewer to imagine themselves in the backyard on a warm summer night.
Customize These Home Staging Tips
Your situation may not fit any of the narratives painted here—that’s OK.
Your home-selling experience is a unique one and should feel fun. Home staging is a chance for your space to feel reinvented and refreshed. Challenge yourself a bit and go outside of your comfort zone. Allow yourself to feel excited and get some inspiration for the new space you’re going to live in.
