Staging is about making a house look terrific, but it’s important not to confuse it with interior design. Both involve furniture placement, adding color, and carefully placing just the right accessories, but that’s where the similiarities end.
The goal of interior design is to create an environment that perfectly reflects the style and taste of the home’s owner; the focus of staging is to make the house more marketable by creating the most appealing home to the greatest number of prospective buyers. Far from reflecting a unique style, a staged home should be just impersonal enough to not infringe on a buyer’s own sense of style.
Home stylists, as stagers are sometimes called, compare the process to the design of a model home; they furnish and accessorize it in order to call attention to the home’s best features–the features that will attract the interest of a potential buyer. At the same time, they avoid any decor that’s too distinctive-such as a bright painting or a busily patterned couch–that will pull the prospect’s eye away from the home and towards its furnishing.
Here are some most frequent made suggestions:
Pack up early. Sellers should pack up several large pieces of furniture and as much clutter in each room as possible. Don’t just shift the stuff to another room or garage rent a storage space and get it out of the house before showing. The way you live in your home and the way you sell your house are two different things.
Stick with beige. Don’t assume that buyers will be able to look past the bad carpeting and just offer a credit off the purchase price. Most buyers will keep looking for a house with fresh carpeting.
Use the rule of three. Three items are pleasing to the eye. Whether it’s artwork, figurines on a shelf, a magazine stack, pillows, afghans, or candles, arrange them in threes for a pleasing display as accents in any room.
Downplay your decorating tastes. Sellers should keep in mind that not everyone shares their sense of style. To ensure that their personal decorating tastes don’t come between the house and the potential buyer, minimize the impact of furnishings, artwork, and accessories. Using less can result in more offers.
De-clutter kitchen counters. The more spacious a kitchen appears, the more it will impress. Pack away unnecessary items, such as any appliance that you don’t use everyday. Box up clutter to give potential buyers a better idea of how functional the space can be.
