24+ Staging Tips To Sell A House

It is vital to take the extra step with the anticipation that potential buyers will open the pantry door. They will pull out drawers, especially the top drawer. You want to make sure that there is some sense of organization. Welcome to the imperfectly empowered podcast with DIY healthy lifestyle blogger on a former empowering you to transform your life. One imperfect day at a time. Hello and welcome back to the imperfectly empowered podcast. I am your host, Anna Fuller. Today, we are going to talk over two dozen staging tips to sell your home and make it look magazine worthy. Maybe you’re not even wanting to sell your home. Maybe you just want to give it a little bit of extra aesthetic appeal, cuz you’re hosting a large party or you’re holding an event at your house, or maybe you do want to sell your house and you want to know. What are the tips and tricks to giving your home that added appeal? Let me tell you a quick story. Here’s how I know that you can make your home look more than it is actually worth when we were selling our second house. So we’ve fixed up three homes now. And when we were selling our second house, I sold it myself. I listed it and sold it myself. I’m not a realtor by trade. But we had a realtor negotiating the price for his client, and he was suggesting that the final appraisal for this house wouldn’t be high enough due to the neighborhood. This home was listed significantly above the rest of the neighborhood, cuz we were ahead of our time and the neighborhood and I kid you not, this is what he told me over the phone. He said it is a beautiful house, but your staging makes the home look like more than it is actually. Worth. Um, thank you. I think like, what do you even just say to that? By the way, we had no problems with the appraisal. It sold for 30, over the most expensive home in that particular neighborhood at the time. So we elevated the value for everybody else. And the bottom line is this he’s not wrong in the sense that staging can make a. Look more than it’s actually worth. This is what I would consider a magazine worthy approach because in reality, even though a picture’s worth a thousand words, a picture can also be incredibly deceiving. So we’re not trying. To hide things, to be clear when we are staging a home, we’re simply trying to give it a nicer look using what is already there. Be sure to watch this video to the very, very end I’m about to get into the staging tips really shortly. However, I want you to know that at the end of this video, there is going to be a before and after house tour of the third home that we just sold, that we fixed up and sold where I am showing you in real time. What I did to stage the house. So each of the, before video shots is directly before I staged that room for the pictures there’s notes on it. It’ll kinda show you in real time what I’m looking for and how I’m assessing a room before I stage it. So stay tuned. Watch to the end of this video. And then you will see that before and after house tour. Give you a little bit of added help when you go to stage your home. Okay. Let’s chat these staging tips to sell your house, make it look magazine worthy. Again, remember that we’ve done this multiple times. I have heard over and over and over again. Realtors told me you did such an incredible job staging. I actually had somebody offer to pay me to stage their home. I just referred them to this blog post, by the way, I wrote this post quite a while ago, but first number one, let’s talk about curb appeal. I want you to remember that in all of these tips. Photographs are the most important part of selling your home? When we talk about these staging tips, a lot of people forget about the photos. This is not just for open houses. This is not just for showings. When people are walking through your home. Most importantly, if you don’t have the time to stage your home more than once, then these tips should be used for the photographs. Let me repeat that. If you don’t have the time to stage your home more than. These tips should be used for the photographs because a potential buyer will spend more time looking at photos than in your actual home potential buyers will spend more time looking at the photos than they will. Actually in your home, this means if you are going to use these tips, you must use them for the photos, repeat them maybe in half measures then for the open house and showings, but absolutely use them for the photos. I cannot believe some of the photos that I have seen and then make sure you get high quality photos. Let’s talk curb appeal. So keep in mind the first impression that a potential buyer will have of your home. Is the exterior. This is typically true. Even for photos. It’s usually the primary photo that is shown some easy tips to make sure that you are giving the best, first impression that you can in lines, even if that’s normally what not normally what you would do, make sure that you have nice clean lines place. One decorative item on your front door that is seasonally appropriate. The exception to this is if you have gorgeous. Decorative glass, let that speak for itself. Less is more. Our very first home was an old Victorian house that we renovated and I put a gorgeous decorative glass into the original door from this Victorian home. I did not cover that with anything. We, at least the front flower beds, at least the front. Now some of this depends on the season that you’re selling your home. Our first two fix wrappers, we sold in the spring. So I paid a lot more attention to landscaping. I should actually say it was like late spring, early summer. If you’re selling it. Where no one else has actually weed their flower beds yet, because it might be a little closer to the early spring or winter months. I would still make sure that they are clean and organized. That sounds silly to say of flower beds, but you know what I’m saying? Like make sure that there’s not tons and tons of leaves mashed in there. Just make sure that they look clean. But if you are selling your home in late spring or early summer, make sure your flower beds are weeded. Consider removing the garden. No, your Dallas Cowboys flag. No offense to Cowboys fans, the roller blades that were left on the sidewalk, clean it up less is more generally speaking in all of decorating. Less is more. If you have furniture on the front porch, give it a once over step back, take a look at it. Is it adding to, or detracting from the first impression? If it is rusted? and the seat cushions are super faded. Give it a little makeover. A little bit of spray paint goes a long way. You can actually spray cushions by the way. If you are just simply wanting to give them a nicer look, consider adding a decorative pillow or two, that would be one hack. If those cushions are really faded, that would be cheaper than simply buying new. Outdoor furniture just consider running to target and throwing on a cheapo, but nice and bright outdoor pillow if it is beyond SIFY. However, yes, SIFY is a word. Welcome to the imperfectly empowered podcast. we are empowering you to just make up words, but if you furniture is beyond crucifying, just get rid of it. Truly less is more. You do not want to detract from. The overall look when somebody first walks up, consider placing a couple of planters from the store on either side of your front door. Maybe you don’t have an artistic eye. That’s okay. Flowers are like a NOFA way of making something. Look, pretier it just simply is. It is the rare person I’ve ever met in my life that looks at flowers and thinks, Ugh, why would you put flowers here? right. Flowers. Just make everything look nicer. So put two planters that you bought from the store on either side of the front door. If nothing else, it will give a little bit of color to the front and it will draw your eye to the entrance of the home, which is really what you want to do. Nothing flashy, just keep it neat and organized ferns. Also, by the way, are a wonderful way of adding some green. To the front door. And again, just give everything else at once over, get rid of flags and just unnecessary garden homes or things in your guard that you could potentially get rid of. Let’s talk lights. Now here’s an interesting scenario when you are photographing a home for a magazine or for a blog, and you are trying to take pictures of your home. It is generally under in natural light. You actually wanna photograph your home in natural light except for real estate photos. And I think this is because one light makes rooms look bigger, but also you are trying to light every shadow in every corner of the house. So this is also going to be true for showings, for open houses. You actually want to turn every light on every single light on. One of the other advantages to this is let’s say there’s some uneven dry wall. The light will help hide that. Believe it or not. I know it sounds like the opposite, but it will actually make the home more appealing by turning on all of the lights. The shadows will be more likely to show like your seams in the dry wall. Or just make a home look smaller and maybe even dirtier. I know it sounds backwards, but it’s true. You want every single light on in the house? I personally always open every door, including closet doors. I don’t throw closet doors wide open. If they’re like bifold doors, I will just open them enough so that they are slightly folded open so that it is easy for somebody to peek inside. I will slightly open. Most closet doors, the room doors, every single room door I have wide open. One of the reasons that I’ve always done this is I never want somebody walking through the house thinking there’s something to hide. And in fact, I actually think people are less likely to open everything. If the general impression of the home is that it is already wide open for everything to be. That being said, while we’re talking about doors and we’ll get to this a little bit later, when we talk about cleaning and organizing, just remember, people will always, always pull open the top drawer. It’s habit. People don’t even realize they’re doing it. They might not even register what they see, but they will open the top drawer of any cabinet. So make sure that you think about what those drawer. Look like organize your drawers is the takeaway there. This speaks to decluttering. This is the time to make your countertops look perfect. Bathroom countertops, kitchen countertops. How do you do that? If you typically keep a toaster, a can opener set of knives, a coffee maker, a basket of bills, and all your spices on the countertop. Consider removing the majority of them to make it look more open. It will actually make your room look bigger. Especially a kitchen, which is always, always, always going to be a win the kitchen, especially prioritize the kitchen for everything. Really. If you’re struggling in your kitchen, you can try Googling staged kitchens. Definitely take a look on my blog, Google kitchen for finished photos of the kitchen. Just to get some ideas for staging, how to keep it less cluttered appearing. If you have a lot of knacks, if you’re a knack person, For the most part, not a knickknack person, but even just from a decorative standpoint, a good rule of thumb is to stage items in groups of three odd numbers, slightly offset them. This is also true for pictures on the wall, by the way, groups of three. So if you have a shelf that is just full of stuff, You want to try to arrange them in groups of three, or you wanna take the majority of stuff off of the shelf and try to arrange them in odd numbers. If you have 10 items, try to cut it down to five less is more pick three and arrange accordingly. If at all. Possible, don’t forget bathroom countertops, same thing. D clutter take off all of the toothbrushes and the toothpaste. Put them in drawers. Try to arrange them fairly neatly in the drawers. Again, they will get opened. I promise you people will look inside the drawers and it will make your bathroom instantly appear bigger, cleaner, and nicer. Ultimately. So while we’re on the subject of pictures, let’s talk pictures there. You’ll find that expert advice here varies widely. When it comes to pictures, some will say, don’t leave any pictures of your family on the walls, because you want the potential buyer to visualize themselves living in the house. Your picture frames are falling apart and the pictures themselves are inappropriate, which I’m not sure why you would’ve had them on the wall in the first place. I personally feel that several high quality well placed, large family pictures can serve as works of art. One, I personally think it makes a home feel more appealing. It’s been lived in memories have been made here. Children are smiling. Hopefully, although in our last picture, I don’t, our kids were like hanging upside down and anyway, large picture frames are a great way to accentuate a decorative style. If you have a very modern style, go for a clean, you know, classic, large picture frame, it can also make. Uh, room feel bigger if you go for just a couple big, large blown up pictures that are high quality. If your family room wall is covered with tons and tons of pictures of your super cute kids, I would recommend scaling them down again, groups of three or five, try to reframe them. If they’re not already nice frames with just simple, simple frames and arrange them. As a vignette above a sofa or a different piece of furniture, less is more, less is more. If you have like tons of little, like four by six pictures on a wall, you might wanna actually pull some of them off and just repaint. It can actually make a room feel very, very small and cluttered even. So again, like I actually, there’s a picture on an entertainment center at our second house I had. Pictures sitting on top of the entertainment center. And I had arranged them in groups of three. So they’re just three standing picture frames. You just don’t wanna clutter don’t clutter, your space flowers. I’ve mentioned flowers. You can’t have too many flowers. Place fresh bouquets store bought people store bought. What I would typically do is buy, I think two, maybe just two large bouquets at the grocery store. I did not spend a lot of money, but then what I did is I took those bouquets apart. I got Mason jars that I already had left over from like spaghetti sauce that we’d bought or whatever. I repurpose all my glass jars. I’m kind of obsessed with pretty glass jars, but I would put these flowers into these jars. I would tear apart grocery store, flower bouquets, take them apart and create multiple bouquets. And I would put a bouquet in most of the bathroom. In the kitchen and frankly, anywhere else, maybe even on the back porch, if there’s a table on the back porch, consider putting one on a coffee table. When somebody first walks in, it gives a very fresh, airy, colorful appearance place. One on the dining room table. Like I said, don’t be afraid to take it apart and. Put it in any dreary room. If you feel like there’s a dreary room, somewhere, stick of bouquet of flowers in it, you have tried it all worried. You will never lose the extra weight or reclaim the energy you once enjoyed, want to achieve bat loss without spending hours in a gym or eliminating entire. Food groups from your diet. Well, now you can, in the virtual faster way to fat loss with Anna, my six week fitness nutrition program, you will learn how to pair effective 30 minute workouts with all natural evidence based nutritional strategies to leverage what you eat. When you eat to reset your metabolism and burn fat fast, even that stubborn belly fat. I am a dual certified nurse practitioner passionate about teaching sustainable strategies to promote fat loss and prevent disease. I have cheered on thousands of clients who have done just that with the faster way program in my six week program, the average client currently. 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However, when we sold this third house in this crazy seller’s market, we had 50 showings in a couple days, we basically moved out of our house and there was no way I could prep this house for every showing. So again, times and seasons. But in previous homes, I would semi stage the house. Every time we had a showing. And because I also showed a lot of them since I sold our house, I would like candles. Make sure obviously that they are not a fire hazard, but spread a couple of handles a candles throughout the house, make sure that they smell good. Uh, it is usually a safe bet to go with candles that resemble. Food, not flowers. Some people are actually allergic and the really, really potent floral smells are actually less likely to be appreciated. But if you go for a soft vanilla scent, Or like apple, pumpkin cinnamon. Those tend to actually be very well received by most people. I would avoid strong floral scents. I have, um, had bread baking in a bread machine. It makes the home smell delicious and you can kind of set it and forget it. Right? You don’t have to pay any attention to it makes the home smell really good. Again, this last house was a little unusual cuz the seller’s market was so insane, but in previous homes I would also program our coffee maker. To go off during or to be in the process of percolating, if you will, while a showing or an open house was happening, I would also offer coffee to people then as well. But most people, not everybody, but most people also appreciate the homey smell of coffee. That’s usually a safe. A safe smell as well for an extra staging tip. Here’s another one I have done this. I have absolutely done this. Cook a bag of popcorn in the microwave and just leave. Again, don’t burn. It. That’s like the opposite effect, but that butter smell is generally speaking appreciated by people and gives that nostalgic sense of home. So get like a really buttery popcorn, put it in the microwave. Most people are not opening microwaves, some do, but again, it really makes the home smell amazing. Again, the coffee machine, these are all generally speaking. There’s always exceptions to the rule. Familiar aromas that most people will appreciate. Another thing. When we’re talking about food, I always had a cake stand, a glass cake stand that I would put bagels in. So I’d freeze a big bag of bagels from the store. And then before each showing I would stock the little like glass cake stand with muffins and bagel. It’s homey. It makes your home look like a magazine. It is super easy to do you just grab some out of the freezer? Like you eat them over the week, you know, as your home is on the market. This is also really a great tip. If you’re hosting people, you’re having a fancy party or whatever, just put out a cake, stand and throw a bunch of baked goods in it. Even if you just bought them from the store. It looks really cute. Martha Stewarts visited your home and it offers a delicious sweet treat to people, certainly replenish as needed cleaning. This seems like an obvious statement. And yet I have walked through potential homes that I want to buy that appear to have missed this memo. I mean, it boggles my mind. This is, these are such a lot of these are so easy. These tips are so easy, but you need to think magazine cover clean. You can consider hiring a cleaning service to give your house a thorough deep clean the day before, or the morning of your open house or party or whatever, or find a friend who loves to clean. I can tell you right now, I am not that friend, which is really strange. I know people are always like, it’s so funny to me that you don’t love to clean. Now, if you need something organized, I’m your girl. I love organizing, but this is not the same thing as cleaning. You need your closet organized. Hit me up. I’m all about organization cleaning. Ugh. I never feel like cleaning, which is why we’ve hired a cleaner for many, many years. Dena. You’re amazing. So an, an important note here as well, when we’re talking about cleaning, if you smoke. Even if somebody smokes outside the house cigarettes that is or cigars, if anyone smokes even outside the house and could potentially bring it in on their clothing, or if you have pets, I would seriously, seriously recommend professionally cleaning the carpets. Or just hiring a professional cleaner period who can also help purify the air. And the reason I say that is this as somebody who has never smoked, I never grew up around those smells. I also never had pets. I never grew up around pets. This sounds like an incredibly judgemental statement, but bear with me here. The reality is it is not a clean smell to me and I smell it instantly. I am not saying that people who have pets or people who smoke are dirty people, please hear me when I say that, I am not suggesting that at all, but if I am walking through a home where I smell that, clearly it smells dirty to me. Just be mindful that if somebody does not have pets, especially smoke the smoke smell, it can detract. From the impression of your home, just be very, very conscious. That is somebody who I would in. I would highly, highly encourage to one professionally clean the carpets or hire, you know, a friend or somebody who, you know, who knows what they’re doing, or potentially hire somebody to deep clean the home here is another option. You can also get one of those vacuums that washes the carpets. It is basically looks like a vacuum. And it has the brush that spins underneath, but it actually washes your carpets. They make them specifically for pets. I actually have one. I can make sure that it’s linked on the blog post and in the show notes, they really does work. It’s kind of amazing. I use it for my rugs because we don’t really have much carpet. We just do rugs, but again, a pet or smoking it clings to. Carpet fibers, highly, highly, highly recommend cleaning. Another time saving tip are robot vacuums. Oh my goodness. Especially when I was selling our own homes, like in the first two houses, the second house I had a robot vacuum. It was actually the recommendation of our cleaning lady. Oh, I’ve never gone back again. Don’t love to clean and it, it’s absolutely amazing. They do work. People always ask, do they really work? 100%. They work and you press a button. It vacuums your house, such a lifesaver. This is linked in the show notes. Ours also seconds as a pet Lily rides it, she doesn’t anymore because he won’t move if she’s sitting on top of him. But when we first got it, Lily was about one and she would always ride our robot vacuum and he was named dBot. So who needs a pet when you have a robot vacuum, highly, highly recommend it, both of those vacuums that I just mentioned, whether it’s to clean your carpets with water and soap, or it is just simply to save time with a robot vacuum. Those are both tips to clean work smarter, not harder. Here’s the piece that I want to point out though. We just talked about cleaning. Now let’s talk about organizing. They are not the same as I’ve already mentioned after you declutter, that means you remove things from your countertop. You remove things from shelves. You may remove decorative pieces from a bookshelf or something, then you need to organize what remains. Decluttering means you’ve removed the access items because less is more taking away. Things actually makes the space look bigger and cleaner, but you need to then organize what remains a arrange it in such a way as to visually optimize it. Arranging in groups of three is a decorative hack or five or seven. It depends on how big a space you’re talking about. What is there, unless you are selling a home. As is which in that case, you can pretty much ignore everything that I have said so far. It is vital. To take the extra step with the anticipation that potential buyers will open the pantry door. They will pull out drawers, especially the top drawer. Any place that you look that has a top drawer, it will get opened. I promise you I do it. I do it myself. I open it. I don’t even think about it. You want to make sure that there is some sense of organization, the linen closet in the hall, people pure around shower curtain. People peer in fact, some people just open them and then leave them there. That drives me nuts. When we had this 50 showings, it was crazy. I’d come back after like 10 showings in a day. I’d come back to my house. And I was always so surprised. Like the things that like lights were left on and anyway, be respectful people, but people will look behind shower curtains. People will open just about anything. And everything just be conscious of what the chores look like. Don’t give them any reason to think twice. Don’t give them any reason to think twice that is the bottom line. If you have a laundry room area, this is another area walking closets. There’s a lot of spaces that people don’t think about just simply. Organize them organize them, make sure your hangers are not like one is flipped up and one is falling under the clothes on the ground. And you know, your shirts are all arranged in weird ways and maybe one is sort of on the hanger. Another one sort of falling off. I know it sounds silly, but just make it look really neat and organized. Have all your shirts facing the same direction. Have all your pants in one section again, a little OCD here. I understand. But the point is give it a once over. I’m not saying you need to maintain it. This is not the time to give your home like a super relaxed lived in appearance. You want to make it look very clean and organized because people will look no expectation to maintain it. Just to make it look magazine worthy. Right? It’s like one picture. even when people walk through your home, it’s really more like a snapshot in their mind. They’re not lingering for long. So you wanna give them the best impression. A side note on organization, open concept designs have become widely popular, but it is so important to contain the clutter. If you have baskets and shelves that are. Overflowing with things, try to consolidate or remove some of the things from the basket. So it doesn’t look like they’re just busting at the seams, make sure that they also look organized, make the beds, people make the beds. I cannot tell you again, how many pictures, pictures like home pictures, where the beds aren’t made. Let me be really clear. I don’t make my bed every morning. It’s never made any sense to. Because I’m just gonna get in it again. And nobody goes back there except for me even, I hardly go back to my bedroom after I leave it early in the morning and I shower and I come back and dress for the most part. I’m not back in that room until I go to bed at night. So I don’t even hardly see my unmade bed. So to be clear, I don’t even make my bed every morning. However, if I am going to put a picture of my bedroom, Up for the public to see, because I want them to consider buying my house. You better believe my bed is going to be made, make the beds. Every bed don’t allow somebody to come in and snap pictures of your home without the bed made. If you are having showings, make sure the beds are made. You do not have to have the room. Absolutely pristine and spotless, but please, please, please. Make the bed, make sure play tables are organized. Kids areas. Again, just organizing makes such a difference. Keep them in baskets, keep them hidden in toy chest. Just so there’s not a ton of loose toys STR about the floor. I actually have an example on the blog when we sold our second home. Lily’s bedroom at the time was also the guest bedroom. It was a mismatch of furniture. There was stuff, you know, nothing matched, but I still had it organized. I still had it organized. And you can see that picture. You know, the point is you don’t need to buy out pottery barn to stage your house. Organize what you do have though, and give it the best aesthetic visual appeal that you can. Here’s a bonus tip bonus tip. If you have renovated your home, if you have added value to your home over the years, put a plastic placard in any room that you added value to. And write it out, type it out on a piece of paper that’s printed and then set inside the placard one. It helps you think through all the ways that you’ve added value, even if it’s just a fresh coat of paint a year ago, write that down. Fresh coat of paint in 2021. If you replace the entire kitchen. Write it down and put it on this placard. If you have invested a lot of time into this home, put it on a placard in each room. I did not end up doing this on the third home. Although I wrote a very, very detailed description for the website that included all of the major updates, but I did do it for the first two homes. And again, we sold those two homes for a hundred grand over. What we bought it for profited 40 to 50 on each home that was outside of a crazy seller’s market. Like this market right now is, is nuts. It’s not a baseline where those first two homes. You know, I kind of took every step that I could to make sure that we maximized our profit. And I just think it helps a potential buyer see all the work that you have put into this home. And it also shows transparency and attention to detail, which is appealing to most people, whether they can even recognize it or not. A technological tip is to add a QR. And you can even offer, like, if you want more information, scan this here, if there’s something else, like you have a solar system that tends to be a frequently asked question, or if you have a seller’s disclosure that. Somebody is going to want to see just simply link it and it can, autopopulate an email that will go right to your realtor litter or yourself. If you’re selling your own home, then you can just reply send. So don’t be afraid to use QR codes on those placards as well. Coming up, stay tuned right here. Don’t go anywhere. I am going to actually show you a video of the before and after staging of this last house that we sold. There’s notes on it, showing you in real time. What I did these videos quite literally the before picture is right before I staged the home for the photos. Right before. So this will show you in real time, kind of my approach, the things that I’m looking at when I’m staging a room before putting it on the market before taking photos of it. I hope these tips are helpful. Again, whether you are trying to sell your house, whether you’re hosting a party to give your home. That magazine worthy. Look, thanks for listening to this episode of the imperfectly empowered podcast. I would love to hear your thoughts from today. Head to your preferred podcasting platform and give the show an honest review and let me know what you think. Remember, you cannot be redefined only redeveloped one imperfect day at a time. Your story matters and you are loved.