Five Tips For Staging Your Home

Not sure what it’s like in your neighborhood, but I feel like stuff is flying off the market these days. Our neighbors sold on their first day on market over asking. And a total fixer upper two doors down just sold in less than two weeks. One of the reasons that homes have been selling so quickly is because the inventory has been so low so the few places on the market are in high demand. Now that Spring is here, however, there’s suddenly an influx of places for sale so separating your home from other places on the market is important. Last week, we spent a couple of days working on staging a gorgeous condo in Evanston. It’s in a gorgeous three-flat a block from the lake. Normally when we stage, it involves (a lot of!) decluttering, neutralizing personal items and generally contemporizing things to appeal to a wide range of buyers. In this case, our client has impeccable modern taste.

Here are five tips that we went through and applied with our client…

One: Change Out What You Want to Keep

If there’s something in your house you just love and want to take with you, make the effort to switch it out before you put your home on the market. Yes, you can write in a contract that something like a special light is excluded, but why take the chance a buyer also loves it. Our client loves her dining room pendant so we switched it out for a simple white fabric drum shade. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get a good looking light. This White Drum Pendant is under $100.

 

Two: Pay Attention to Lighting

You’ve heard us say it before, you have got to layer lighting in your house. And, when you’re selling your home, you need to make sure you’ve got the right lighting for day and evening/night showings. Don’t rely on ceiling canned lights to create atmosphere. In every room, you should have a combination of lighting levels–ceiling, floor and table (and maybe even wall in certain scenarios.) Lighting is obviously functional, but it can also be used to accentuate a key architectural feature like sconces on a fireplace or a pendant light in a tray ceiling. While the pic below is a little glam for my taste, it’s a great example of using layers of lighting…

Three: Modernize Your Bedding

You’d think that people could look beyond your decor, but many really can’t. Put fresh bedding on your bed will freshen up your whole room. We love simple hotel-style sheets like these PB Morgan ones–they’re so clean and simple that they’ll appeal to every type of potential buyer!

And remember, you don’t have to spend a lot of money.Remember simple is always better so choose a simple white duvet cover and then lay a nice blanket across the bottom of the bed and bring in some matching pillow shams. We used this blanket (under $40!) in our staging project this week:

Because our client didn’t have a headboard in the room, we added large grey euro shams behind her standard white pillowcases–easy and more affordable than adding a headboard.

Four: Use Color and Pattern to Detract from Dated Finishes in Kitchens and Bathrooms

Where I live, it’s rare to buy a home that has gorgeous new bathrooms and kitchen. My less than scientific data would say that 75% of homes need those rooms updated. An easy way to detract from the typical 80s white laminate we see a lot is to add a modern pattern or a bright color to key areas of a room to trick the eye. While both Amy and I are generally fans of clean, white towels in a bathroom, if a bath needs updating we’ll bring in new, bright towels like this

We always recommend cleaning up grout and caulking, but we’ll also often bring in a patterned shower curtain to keep the eye moving around the bathroom rather than focusing on any one thing. I love this grey shower curtain

Five: Bring in Some Easy Greenery

I think fresh flowers make a home so much better, but it can get pricey refreshing those flowers for every showing. So, turn to other ways of bringing live things into your space that might last a little longer like a little succulent on a bathroom counter or a cool terrarium like this one placed on top of some books on a coffee or entry table.

House on the market or recently went through it? What did you wish you’d done??