Staging a Home for Sale – 10 More Ideas You CAN Use Part II

Posted at 12:21 PM, Jun. 30, 2006

Staging a Home for Sale – 10 More Ideas You CAN Use.

Part II

If you have gathered all your personal items into storage boxes and removed bulky furniture to create good traffic flow throughout the home, here are some additional tips to complete the Staging-For-Sale process.

1)     Buyers like neutral walls, so cover any walls which do not look fresh and clean or those with loud or pastel colors, with beige or off-white paint.  Freshly painted walls are by far the most effective change you can make when selling your home.  Years of dirty marks from moving furniture, children’s dirty handprints and high traffic dirty areas particularly around light switches) are covered instantly with a fresh coat of paint.  Hire a local teenager to help you out.  Remember to tackle painting only one room at a time as painting walls can be, well, boring, messy and quite physical. 

2)     Once painting is completed, stand in the entrance to each room and quickly focus on the first place your eyes take you when you are looking in. 

• Are you looking at a window?
• Are you looking at a niche in the wall?
• Are you looking at an archway over a window?

There must be something in the room, where your eyes naturally travel and focus.  Even if the room is bare-bones and has only 4 walls and window, the window will be the focus.  (If the room has only four walls and no focus area, we will cover in another staging article how to create a focus space from that which does not exist.)

Whatever section of the room your eyes will focus upon will be used to accentuate that particular space.  Creating a focus area in the room creates a memory of that space, evokes an emotion (nice, comfortable, bright, cheery, etc.); all of which we plan will be a positive emotion the buyer will remember!  Thus, helping to sell your home!

3)  If you have blinds on the windows, remove them even though it may mean a few months of losing some privacy while the home is being sold. (At night, just thumbtack a sheet over the window for temporary privacy and take it down in the morning before buyers come through the home.  (There will be some amount of inconvenience in staging a home, but again, it is the final sale price that will make you realize, “The inconvenience was well-worth it!”) The use of natural light in any room makes the space appear larger and offers a positive psychological affect of being ‘bright’ and ‘cheery’….all emotions that buyers need to visualize when making a home purchase.  Remember, the price of the home could be well within the means of the buyer, but if the home shows as ‘dreary’ or ‘dark’, you may not get your sale price. 

4)  Add attractive window coverings:

Hang a simple rod across the window and drape decorative handkerchiefs or colorful cloth napkins from the rod to make a colorful valance.  If you decide to hang a curtain be sure to pull the sides together with a ribbon, a piece of raffia or a napkin ring.  I have even used a braided piece of old rags, colorful yarn and hemp string as ties for curtains.  (Pre-teens and teenagers love to spend hours braiding, so ask them to do it!)

5) If the view from the window is not so appealing and the sight is something you wish to downplay, then add a shear curtain to that rod and hang the cloth napkins over the top.  The main focus is to offer as much natural light to the room and to ‘neaten-up’ the window taking away the harder edges of the sill and the window frame.  Be sure to repair any screens before exposing the outside through the window. If you do not have time to repair the screens, just pop them out for the staging but remember the screen is missing if you decide to open that window.

6) If you have a bad view from a particular room and you are on the first floor, consider placing a few potted plants outside that window to block the view.  This tip will add a little greenery to the view but still permit light into the room. I have even attached a few inexpensive flower boxes to the outside of ground floor windows, planted a few inexpensive flowers in the boxes, which also serves the purposes of blocking a bad view from inside the room, allowing light through a window while offering a little instant outside landscape for the buyer to see when inspecting the perimeter of the property.

7) Once the window has been made a focal point of the room, pull together a seating area.  The same formula holds true…two chairs, one table, a lamp and small bouquet of flowers.  If you do not have a spare table, consider using a cooler, a sturdy box, an ottoman, or a large stereo speaker and cover with linen table cloth.  I happen to keep a supply of table cloths handy that have been handed down to me, even if they have stains on them, but if you do not have an extra (it has to be a cloth table cloth; not paper and not plastic) table cloth, I have used a spare folded curtain, a round of extra cloth purchased for a dollar at the dollar store or an old skirt draped over the box, the latter of which was allowed to flow down the box or table and then cover the waist hole of the skirt with a plate or a bowl filled with fruit.  No one knows the table covering is a skirt when they come through to view your home.

8) If your room does not permit room for two chairs, move the bed up against the windowed wall and into a corner.  Position pillows up against the wall and around the corner to create a pseudo-couch or seating area, even though the bed is just a bed.  In stead of folding the sheets down on the top of the bed, as you would to make the bed, spread the entire bed with one colorful blanket and tuck the edges under as best you can.  If the bed is covered in one colored blanket or sheet, it will look more like a couch than a bed.  Take that same hemp string, ribbon or long strings of braided yarn used on the curtains to wrap around the base of the bed allowing the sheet or blanket to pucker around the base of the bed.  Instant couch with a neat covering!  Add a rug in front of the bed and try to move the furniture around to allow for a small seating area. You will need to decide if you can move out a dresser or a desk in a room to make it less cluttered and keeps traffic flowing.  (See Part I, about storing extra furniture in a pod container.)

9) If the room has a high ceiling, this is a nice feature buyers often look for in newer homes.  Ceiling fans in high ceilings offer an easy and economical way to add decorative touch to the room while offering better air circulation. If you do not have a ceiling fan, check with your local home improvement store in the clearance section.  I have found open box ceiling fans in perfect condition for under $20.00.  Be sure it has a light kit if the overhead light is the only light switch in the room.  If you see a brown ceiling fan, it only takes a few minutes to paint it white to match the room.  Look at something not as what it is, but what it can be with a few changes.  Most staged items can be purchased at the dollar store or on clearance shelves so be sure to visit these areas when doing your regular shopping.

10) Rugs are useful to define space.  Rugs placed next to the two-chair formula used throughout these articles encloses the space, adds color and style to a room as well as defines that this is a sitting area.  Rooms need to be what they are to the buyer…a bedroom needs to be a bedroom and not bedroom-slash-office.  But a bedroom can show ‘more’ in the way of relaxation (not work!) by adding the two-chair formula to any room and add a nice seating area. Rugs help to define and open up those spaces.

Here are some ways to make rugs and use them for the staging.

Go to the rug store and ask them for a stack of square rug samples they no longer use.  Bring them home and use carpet tape to tape them together on the bottom of the samples.  I also like to run a line of hot glue between the rug samples before taping to add extra tightness to the joints.  Arrange the colors so they compliment something in the room where the rug will be placed.  Too many colors and it will look too busy, too few colors and it becomes boring. So the general rule is to use ‘three’…three of everything.  Three colored rug squares and then pick up those colors or shades of chosen rug colors in the pillows and any decorative pieces in the room.  Tying in colors from the bouquet you will place in each room (See Part I), is also a nice way to make the room look ‘together’.