Home staging is an art designed to show off your home in its best light. If done properly, staging can help sell your house faster and at top dollar. It can make your property stand out against competitors, especially since not all owners stage their houses.

Professional home stagers understand the current market—from flooring that’ll make buyers swoon to paint colors that can make you money. They can even help maximize each room so that the coziest nook feels downright spacious.

Home staging isn’t only important for the open house, it’s also a vital part of marketing it online— which is how buyers are likely to find your house anyway. The best part is, you can do it for free!

So, ready to get started staging your home on a budget?

Here are some quick and easy ideas that will make your house look great.

How to Stage your Home to Sell it Faster

When real estate agents talk about home staging, they’re referring to a method of decorating that is designed to showcase the home’s best assets, impress buyers, and sell it quickly for the highest possible price. Most people don’t stage their home, especially homes in lower price ranges. If you take the time and put in the effort, you will be one step ahead of the competition.

Although staging your home is optional, it really shouldn’t be. When you’re dealing with such a significant financial transaction, you don’t want to settle for a lower selling price or longer marketing period than you have to.

So, what should you do to make your house better than the rest? That’s where staging your home comes in.

We’ve got eleven great staging tips for you to make your house sparkle and attract attention.

1. Focus on Big Improvements

Potential buyers aren’t just looking for a structure to inhabit, they’re looking to fulfill their dreams and improve their lifestyles. Staging your home helps sell those dreams and creates a more emotional purchase that can generate more money for you, the seller.

Home staging is also beneficial because potential buyers don’t want to see work that needs to be done as soon as they move into the home. For every problem they see, they’ll deduct the cost of it from their offered price.

It’s best to just focus on big picture improvements and areas that will make the biggest difference. These include the exterior entryway, the living room, kitchen, bathroom, the master bedroom, outdoor living spaces, such as a back patio.

2. Clean Like a Crazy Person

This goes without saying that buyers can’t stand it when they see pictures online and they can see how dirty the house is. If you have a photographer coming to take pictures, clean your house before they come and having your staging all completed.

Rent a pressure washer from the Local Home Depot and pressure wash the outside of your house.

In the kitchen, potential buyers love to see new appliances that come with a home but if you can’t do that, make the ones you have spotless. No one wants to see splattered spaghetti sauce, and piles of crumbs in their potential new home.

Likewise, make sure your bathroom sparkles from the corners of the tub to the sink drain to that spot behind the toilet you think no can see. Your goal should be to make everything look new and like a builder’s model home.

3. Declutter Every Room

There are two major problems with clutter. One is that it distracts the buyers from your home’s features and the other is that it makes it seem like the home doesn’t have enough storage space.

Get rid of all the clutter, and that includes furniture. So, take down everything that’s on the front of your refrigerator, put all of your knick-knacky stuff away, clean up your desk and counters.

Also, make sure that that there are clear traffic patterns through the rooms. If you have so much furniture in your living room that people can’t figure out how to get to the french doors to go outside, that’s a problem. So, try to get rid of as much furniture as you can.

Roll up the rugs if they’re covering those gorgeous hardwood floors and make the room look as bright and open as possible.

Buyers are also interested in your closet space. So, tossing everything into the closet to hide it may not be the best strategy.

4. Depersonalize

Buyers need to be able to envision themselves living in your home. Consider removing all the family pictures or personal items with family members’ names on them. Also, make sure to put away all the toys and anything else that would indicate who currently lives in the home.

5. Light it Up

Take advantage of your home’s natural light. Open all curtains and blinds when showing your home and add supplemental lighting where necessary. Outdated or broken light fixtures can be cheaply and easily replaced. If you think your existing fixtures are fine, make sure to clean off any grime and empty out the dead bugs.

Have extra lighting in each room if possible. You don’t want the rooms to look dark and then when buyers come to see the house, make sure all those lights are turned on.

6. Get Rid of Odors

Pets, kids, what you ate for dinner last night, a mildew covered bathroom and many other conditions can make your home smell. You’re probably immune to the odors so you need to have a friend or a neighbor help you out with this one.

Inexpensive and simple ways for ridding a home of odors and giving an inviting aroma include baking cinnamon coated apples, slicing, and baking cookies in the oven, or burning pet candles. It’s also a good idea to grind a half a lemon in the garbage disposal to remove sink odors. While you could use a spray to deodorize your home, it might give it a cheap institutional bathroom smell, which is hardly the image you’re going for.

Finally, don’t forget to take out the trash.

7. Highlight the Best Features of Your House

The first thing to do is to figure out what draws you to a particular room. For instance, it could be a great fireplace or an amazing view. In order to figure out how best to arrange a room, you need to establish the focal point & work outwards from that point.

Once you’ve figured out the focal point, you should decide on how best to highlight that feature. For example, the fireplace can get a new mantle, or bookcases can be installed on either side to balance the space. Give the room a facelift, and the fireplace can become the feature wall that stands out from the rest.

Similarly, if you have a stunning in-ground pool, arrange your patio furniture to make it look like a spa or a high-end hotel. If you have glass-front cabinets in your kitchen, make sure that your prettiest dishes and vases are in those cabinets.

So, whatever the best features of your house are, make sure that you’re drawing attention to those features.

8. Define Rooms

You have to ensure that each room has a single defined purpose. Also, make sure that every space within every room has a purpose so that buyers will see how to maximize a home’s square footage.

If you have a finished attic, make it an office. A finished basement can become an entertainment room, and a junk room can be transformed into a guest bedroom. Even if the buyer won’t want to use the room for the same purpose, the important thing is for them to see that every inch of the home is usable space. This includes alcoves, windows seats, corners, breakfast nooks, and so on.

9. Place Inexpensive Home Decor Items

Pick up inexpensive yet modern home decor items at places like Kirkland’s, Hobby Lobby, HomeGoods, TJ Maxx, even yard sales.

Get things such as vases, wrought iron decor, statues, stuff you can put in the shelves, or bookends. Choose decor items that are modern and contemporary. They shouldn’t look outdated or overly frilly.

If you don’t know what to buy, try checking on Pinterest. You can get a million ideas by visiting the website and just typing in something like ” decorate your living room shelves.  ”

10. Remove the wallpapers

It is unlikely that a potential buyer will like your wallpaper. Your best bet is to tear it down and paint the walls instead – and don’t even think about painting over the wallpaper! It will look shabby and send red flags for the buyer about all the work he or she will have to do later.

Custom paint colors are the same way. You may love your orange bedroom but people’s tastes in colors are very specific and highly personal. While you might think that white walls would be ideal, it’s actually better to paint your home with warm, neutral colors that appeal to the masses and project the homey image you’re trying to sell.

11. Flooring must be clean. Period.

No one wants to live with dirty, stained carpet, especially when someone else made it that way. Linoleum is passe and looks cheap. Though expensive, hardwood floors add value and elegance to a home. They are also low maintenance and provide great long-term value and are perfect for buyers with allergies. In other words, they appeal to almost everyone, and if not, they’re easily carpeted over by the buyer and preserved for the next owner.

In kitchens and bathrooms, go with ceramic tiles or stone if you can afford it. If not, use high-quality vinyl tiles that mimic their more expensive counterparts. If you’re in a limited budget, stick to common areas, like the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Bathrooms should make a cut too because they have relatively little floor area and won’t be expensive to upgrade.

12. Open up spaces by rearranging furniture

Sellers can create a sense of openness and volume by rearranging furniture in a way that makes each room spacious and promotes unobstructed movement from space to space. In the living room, for example, seating should be set up in a way that creates a gathering area around the fireplace.

Eliminating certain pieces of furniture, especially too many small pieces, will have a significant, positive impact as well.

13. The Exterior has to be Eye-catching

Your home’s exterior will be the first impression that buyers get and may even determine their interest in viewing the inside. Your lawn, hedges, trees, and other plants should be well-maintained and neatly pruned. Eliminate any weeds.

To brighten up windows, wash them well and consider adding flowerbeds or shutters to brighten them up further. If you can, pressure wash your home’s exterior. It can make it look almost freshly painted but with less effort and expense. The sidewalk leading up to the house should be clean. If possible, purchase new doormats for the front and back doors.

Another way of using the exterior of your home to its greatest advantage is showcasing the swimming pool by making sure it’s crystal clear.

14. Final Touches

Just before any open house or showing, make sure that the efforts of staging your home go the full mile with a few last minutes touches that will make the home seem warm and inviting. These include fresh flowers, letting fresh air into the house so it isn’t stuffy, and putting nicely folded towels in the bathroom.

The Bottom Line

Even if you have plenty of cash to stage your home, don’t invest too much money into staging houses. You want to emphasize the home’s best features but keep in mind that what sells a home and what makes a home usable for the buyer are not necessarily the same thing.

Overall, to get the most bang for your buck, your home staging efforts should be designed to appeal to the widest range of buyers. The more people willing to submit offers for your home, the higher the selling price will be.

Is Your Home Ready?

If you’re thinking of placing your home on the market and would like us to walk through your home and recommend what you can do to showcase your home’s best assets or provide our own professional home staging services, you can book an appointment online at Falaya.com or shoot us a call. Together, we’ll examine your home and determine the most cost-effective ways to stage your home properly and sell it quickly for the highest possible price.