A Selection of Powerful Home Staging Tips to Make Your House Sell Faster
Home staging is all about dressing your house to show it off in its best possible light and make it somewhere buyers want to live. If you want to sell your house faster then home staging could be a very good way to do it.
Quick Links
- Will Home Staging Help me Sell my House Fast?
- The Single Most Important Thing you Need to Know about Home Staging is...
- Six Top Tips for Home Staging
- How Much Should you Spend on Home Staging?
- Should You Use a Home Staging Service?
- Should you Stage an Empty House
- Home Staging Tips that Give Kerb Appeal
- Staging your Garden
- Room by Room
Will Home Staging Help me Sell my House Fast?
Home staging works by getting more people to notice your house and should get you more viewings, get you more offers and so help you to sell your house and move faster. A survey by The Home Staging Association claims that 85% of respondents say a staged home sells up to three times faster than a non-staged property.
Will home staging sell my home for more money? It’s impossible to guarantee that staging your home will add to its value. But home staging experts suggest professional home staging could add 15% to the value of your home.
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The Single Most Important Thing you Need to Know about Home Staging is...
When selling your house you’re not just selling buyers a new house, you’re selling them a new lifestyle. Prospective buyers will be dreaming of a new house where they can live in style, impress their family and friends, bring up happy children, cook wonderful food, have great parties and a wonderful way of life.
OK, in reality, hardly anybody actually does! But showing them that your house could give them that more stylish, more luxurious, more comfortable and more exciting lifestyle is the perfect way to sell it.
Six Top Tips for Home Staging
- Tip one: Think about what buyers want.
Think about who you are likely to sell to and stage your house to appeal directly to those buyers. If you’re selling to young professionals for example stage your house to look sleek and modern. If you’re selling to busy working families make it look spacious and practical. For a home pitched at older buyers you might stage it as homely and comfortable. - Tip two: Get free home staging tips from the experts.
There are loads of interior design magazines, websites and blogs out there where interior designers share ideas on the latest looks, and all for free. Try The 50 Best Interiors Websites. Houzz is also packed with home staging ideas and Instagram and Pinterest are also great places to find ideas.You can even copy home staging ideas from on-trend home furnishings retailers like IKEA and Wayfair.
- Tip three: Snoop on other people’s houses!
Jump onto Zoopla and Rightmove and look at houses that are similar to yours in type and price bracket. Focus in on the houses that you think will most appeal to your ideal buyer, then copy home staging ideas from those.
- Tip four: Visit show homes for home staging inspiration.
Show homes are designed by expert professional interior designers who know how to make a home really appeal to buyers. So visit some show homes, take some pics and copy their looks for free. - Tip five: Spend the least money to get the biggest impact.
Home improvements like new kitchens and new bathrooms are a very expensive way to stage your home. The cheapest home staging ideas include new paint and wallpaper, better lighting, lots of mirrors, house plants and fresh flowers all of which can give a dramatic improvement at a relatively low cost.If you’re buying home staging accessories like new rugs, throws, cushions, artwork, planters and lighting choose things that you can take with you when you move.
- Tip six: The very cheapest ways to stage your home effectively cost little or nothing!
Cleaning your home to the highest possible standard, and keeping it airy and bright for viewings, is one of the best ways to make it look more attractive. Other effective ways to stage your home at no cost include to de-clutter it.Taking some things out will actually make it look more spacious. De-personalise it too. This will help potential buyers to visualise themselves living there.
How Much Should you Spend on Home Staging?
One problem with home staging is that it’s very easy to get carried away once you get started and spend more than you should. So set a budget before you begin and keep within it.
Your house staging budget should be affordable to you, but experts say that a good rule of thumb is to spend no more than 1-2% of the likely selling price of your house.
Should You Use a Home Staging Service?
Home staging consultants are experts in staging a home so that it appeals perfectly to your target buyer. If you decide to use one, get them to draw up a plan before starting and give you a quotation for the cost.
You can save possibly thousands of pounds on home staging consultancy fees by doing your own home staging. Keep within your budget by recycling (or upcycling) your own furniture, buying good quality second-hand items and borrowing spare furnishings from friends and family. You can even hire furniture for home staging if you need to.
Should you Stage an Empty House?
If you’re selling an empty house, such as a house you’ve inherited or a buy-to-let investment you no longer want, think about whether staging it can help it sell faster. Most estate agents will tell you that it’s harder to sell an empty house, and takes longer, as potential buyers find it hard to visualise themselves living there.
Home Staging Tips that Give Kerb Appeal
Kerb appeal is massively important when you want to sell your house. If prospective buyers don’t like the look of it in the property listings, or when they drive up to it, they might decide not to view it. All the effort you put into interior home staging could be wasted.
The whole idea of staging to give kerb appeal is to make your house look like a place buyers would feel happy to come home to, and where they’d be proud to have family and friends visit.
Simple home staging tips that give kerb appeal include a newly painted front door in a contemporary colour, planters with shrubs or flowers, a new house number or nameplate, and a newly painted fence. Hiding the bins will add to the kerb appeal too.
Staging your Garden
Home staging the garden depends on the time of year when you want to sell your house. If it’s autumn or winter then just making sure everything is neat and tidy will probably be sufficient. In spring and summer stage your garden to look like a usable outside room. Tables and chairs, a parasol, sun loungers, a barbecue or a trendy firepit, lanterns and flowering plants will make your garden look a great place to relax.
Room by Room
The Living Room
Living rooms are, as the name says, rooms for living! So they are the place where you can showcase the great lifestyle your house offers potential buyers. Home staging can help them imagine all the great times they’ll have there whether enjoying great films or football, having a cosy night in or entertaining family and friends.
Stage the living room with things that suggest that kind of lifestyle: This might be a giant screen TV with soundbar, a fireplace (a real fire with logs is even better), co-ordinating cushions and rugs, some interesting pieces of art or collectables, and a coffee table or bookcase with a stack of glossy magazines or books.
The Dining Room
The lifestyle you’re selling here is that your dining room is a fantastic place for happy family dinners, or maybe smart dinner parties for friends. One of the cheapest and easiest home staging tips ever is that your dining table should always be set with place settings, tableware, flowers and maybe candles whenever you have a viewing.
If you don’t have a separate dining room then set up a dining area in your kitchen or living room.
The Kitchen
That the kitchen is the heart of every home is a cliché but it’s true. Stage your home so that it looks like a wonderful place to spend time and have fun cooking great meals, not just doing the dishes or the dirty washing. Easy home staging tips for the kitchen that make it look more stylish include a display of glossy recipe books, wine racks, living herbs, professional cookware like you’d expect to find in a restaurant kitchen and designer small appliances like a kettle, pasta maker and coffee machine.
While new kitchens do sell houses it probably isn’t worth blowing your home staging budget on a new kitchen. If your units are dated a fresh coat of paint in modern white or grey is an economical option.
Bathrooms
Bathrooms alongside kitchens are rooms that sell houses so it’s well worth splashing out your budget here. If your bathroom fittings are really dated consider replacing them with a new white suite with a decent shower – even a budget one will do – and some good quality contemporary tiles.
Cheap ways to home stage your bathroom are to add co-ordinating towels, accessories and a blind. Green plants, candles and some luxury toiletries can add a spa-like feel to your bathroom.
Bedrooms
The best way to home stage your bedrooms is to make them look like a haven of peace and tranquillity. Co-ordinating soft furnishings including bed linen, cushions, curtains, blinds and rugs can make your bedrooms look warm and comfortable.
Children’s bedrooms need a different approach to home staging. If your house is aimed at families with babies or younger children then bright, colourful décor works best. If they’re likely to be teenagers then lots of storage, a desk and chair for homework and a TV for gaming will help set the scene.
Home Staging Tips for Every Part of your House
If you have an empty spare bedroom think about styling it as a guest room, home office or even a man cave. If you have unused space in the hallway or on a landing think about presenting it as a valuable extra storage space. If you have a conservatory dress that as a garden room, games room, playroom or maybe a useful second living room.
It’s sensible of course to put more effort into the rooms that sell houses most. But staging other areas of your home is a great way to make it look a great place to live, as well as more flexible and more spacious, all helping to (hopefully) get you more offers and sell your house faster.
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