Top 5 Staging Tips for Selling Your Home

Staging tips for selling your home given to you from a professional organizer’s point of view. Staging a home to sell is an investment and should not be viewed as an expense. When your home is one of your greatest assets, wouldn’t you want to make more money? You have to be willing to invest some time and money into preparing your home. I always say it is like deciding to open a new store. Would you clean the new space, paint it and stock it beautifully with the new items you are going to sell? Of course, you would! So, if you want to make more money from your home sale, you should be willing to do the same. As a professional organizer in British Columbia, I’ve had my fair share of clients hire me to help them stage their homes. Over my years of experience, here are my top 5 staging tips for selling a house:

Turn your home into a house.

One of the most important things to do when selling your house is to take you out of it. If you are selling, it is no longer your home so you might as well detach from it now and turn it into a house. My rule of thumb is to remove all personal photos, personal items, memorabilia (trophies, awards, etc.) religious artifacts and any hunting items. The bonus is that this costs you nothing. You’ll want to clear off your fridge of photos and kid artwork too. Think clean, minimal and hotel-like spaces.

Curb appeal matters.

When walking up to your house and waiting for the realtor to unlock the lockbox, a buyer has already judged your home. Curb appeal is so important because you will never have a second chance to make a first impression. 

It needs to feel warm, taken care of, welcoming and safe. Invest in some fresh paint, weeding, mowing the lawn, trimming hedges planting new shrubs, and adding a container of fresh flowers by the door. These simple tasks will do nothing more than add value to your home. 

You can typically get a 100% return on the money you put into your home’s curb appeal. Do a drive-up yourself and pay attention to what you notice first about your house. Fix those things you notice like dirty windows and dirt on your front porch. 

Half-empty closets and cabinets.

How many times do you hear about someone’s house and all they can talk about is how much storage it has. Storage is something every buyer is looking for and they can never have enough of it! 

People often squirm at the thought of emptying their closets but my attitude is that you are moving and you are either going to have to get rid of it or pack it up so you might as start packing now. Start by getting rid of what you truly don’t need then pack away any seasonal items and label them. Buyers snoop, so be sure to keep all of your closets and cabinets clean and tidy.

By emptying your closets and cabinets during the staging process of selling a house, you’ll let the potential buyers imagine how they would make the home their own. They’ll consider where they’d put their plates and how they’d fill up the master bedroom closet. Plus, everything looks better when it’s minimal and clean. Including closets!

Light it up.

Location is a huge priority for buyers but did you know that every buyer cites that they want good light? Now is the time to make your house bright and cheery. Start by cleaning all of the light fixtures, windows, curtains, change old dull lampshades, increase the wattage of your light bulbs and make an investment in lamps around the house.

During showings, make sure all the lights are turned on before the realtor and potential buyers arrive. Open the curtains and blinds and let the natural light pour in. This will help them envision themselves in the bright home themselves.

Clean, clean, clean.

My final staging tip for selling a home is to clean! This is not the time to do a superficial clean. This is the time to get into every nook and cranny and make it sparkle. 

Once you have gone through the house and removed personal items and decluttered, you should expect to spend a good day cleaning the entire house. It’s time to pull out all of the appliances to clean in them and behind them, clean all of the drawers, closets, cupboards, wash walls, clean carpets, etc. 

And if you read the ‘light it up’, this includes cleaning all of the light fixtures and windows (inside and out). You want to make your house feel like a hotel, how gross is it to rent a hotel room and see dust bunnies on the floor or hair in the bathroom. If you don’t have the time to do this, it is one of the best places to invest in hiring someone. 

Hire a professional home stager to help implement these staging tips.

Hiring a professional home stager or professional organizer can make the task of staging a house for sale easy! I can make recommendations when it comes to furniture placements, décor, paint colours, and much more. 

And, if you need help decluttering and moving, hiring a professional organizer will save you a lot of time and energy. I help clients during the decluttering, staging and moving processes. Reach out to me today if you’re interested in working together to implement these staging tips for selling a house.

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